


Pearl of Great Price

by TheBee



Series: The Riches of Gallifrey [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Angst, Episode AU: s04e17-18 The End of Time, F/M, NSFW, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Time Lord Rose, Time Lords and Ladies, Time Travel, Time War, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 54
Words: 42,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBee/pseuds/TheBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A transmitter--with odd, interlaced eternity symbol on it--is found in Torchwood Three, leading the Doctor and Jack to make a startling discovery. The Doctor ends up with joys he always wanted, burdens he never requested--and a mystery he never imagined.<br/>In this AU, Jack released Wilf at the conclusion of The End of Time. The Tenth Doctor did not regenerate.<br/>Later chapters will be NSFW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Timey-Wimey Detector

**Author's Note:**

> Some brilliant writers before me had ideas that I liked very, very much—and also left me with questions that I had to answer.

The TARDIS shifted and rolled under their feet, buffeting Jack and the Doctor from side to side.

“Hang on, Jack,” the Doctor yelled, slapping down buttons and flipping switches, long arms splayed over the console.

“I’m trying, Doc!” the Captain yelled back, reaching over to toggle the temporal stabilizers. As soon as the lever flipped over, the timeship abruptly stopped shaking. The Doctor and the Captain looked up at each other across the console.

The laughter was contagious.

“I think it’s the last time I come with you when you decide to investigate something, Doc,” the Captain joked. “If I’d known the ride was going to be like that, I would have stayed in Cardiff.”

The Doctor let go of the console and stood, brushing imaginary specks off his pinstriped sleeve. “Oh, fiddle-faddle, Jack”—he twisted his head suddenly—“nope, not saying that again. You like the danger. It’s not as if it would kill you.”

Jack saw a flash of Ianto’s still face. “Yeah, Doc, don’t remind me.”

Instantly, the Doctor realized he’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do it again.” He switched on the TARDIS monitor. “So where did we land, anyway?”

The Doctor was looking at readings on the console. “Oh, that’s not right.”

“What’s not right?”

“A spatial-temporal rift.” The Doctor was rummaging under the TARDIS grating, muttering, then popped back up with a strange object in his hands. “My timey-wimey dectector!”

Jack rolled his eyes. “This is the thing that goes ‘ding!’, right?”

The Doctor’s enthusiasm deflated slightly—even his hair looked droopy.

“Hey, you introduced me to Martha. You should know better by now that we all shared stories.”

The Doctor’s head swung over. “You all? All who?”

“Martha, me, Mickey, Sarah Jane and her friend Jo, the Chestertons, that Benton guy from UNIT”—

— “Sergeant Benton?”—

“He’s retired, yeah, but that’s all of us in the Companions’ Club. Sarah Jane almost got Sir Alistair to attend once, but I guess I scared him off when I flirted with him.” The Doctor’s expression soured, like he had a mouth full of alum. Jack laughed. “Let’s go see what your ding machine will ding-a-ling, Doc.”

“Jack…”

“What?”

“Stop it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Companion's Club is an idea I have stolen (blatantly and shamelessly) from the brilliant Rointheta and the talented Lumendea. Mine is an evil laugh.


	2. A Crack in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Using the TARDIS, the Tenth Doctor and Jack have traced back a signal they discovered in the ruins of Torchwood Three. There's something off about this place, Jack decides, but the Doctor won't tell him what it is.

“So that’s your spatial-temporal rift?” Jack asked, incredulously.

The Doctor nodded, spiky hair bobbing back and forth.

“It looks like a crack in the ass of time.”

“…Yes, I suppose if that’s what you want to define it as, it’s close enough.” The Doctor glowered at the Torchwood agent, then frowned up at the room around the spatial-temporal rift, head swiveling from side to side. Jack turned and eyed the space, too.

It was vast, with a multi-arched ceiling disappearing into blackness and swirling infinity symbols etched on the tops of each arch. The air had that faint, recycled smell of every space installation Jack had ever been on. Even the ones with hydroponic gardens had it. Nothing compared to a real atmosphere. There was something vaguely familiar about the architecture—he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it reminded him of, so he turned back to the rift. It was faintly glowing in the dim room, trailing down a hallway and disappearing into the dark.

“So what’s on the other side, Doc?”

“What?”

“I mean, if you’ve got a crack in the wall, there’s something on the other side, right?” He pointed at the crack. “It’s like the Rift in Cardiff—things can leak through.”

“Well, yes, generally,” the Doctor frowned.

“So what’s on the other side of the crack?” Jack persisted. Only the Doctor wasn’t the one who answered him.

“Possibility.”

The voice was hollow. Rough. Disused. A frail-looking humanoid emerged from the shadows of the room. He was the whitest creature Jack had ever seen. Snow white, with near-colorless eyes, scraggly tufts of silvery hair and an uncertain, tottering gait. He squinted at the Doctor and frowned at Jack.

“Possibility,” the old creature repeated.

“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded.

“I am—the Keeper.”

“The Keeper.” The Doctor gave the Keeper a sour look. Jack raised a brow. Like someone who called himself ‘the Doctor’ could complain about somebody else’s _nom de plume_.

“Yes.”

“Of what?” Jack asked, eager to derail His Oncoming Stormishness.

“Jack…” the Doctor warned.

“It is a legitimate question, Time Lord, and I have no difficulty in answering it.” He turned toward Jack with a slightly sardonic expression. “I am the Keeper of many things, but mostly, possibilities.”

“The Keeper of Possibilities?” Jack may have lost two years of memories in the Time Agency, but they hadn’t taken any of his instincts. He knew something was coming down the pike with this place—this was a chronological crossroads. He just didn’t know if it was going to be good or bad.

“Come, Doctor,” the Keeper said to the Time Lord, then turned to Jack. “Come, Fixed Point.” He gestured them to follow him as he went down the arched hallway, its upper stories lost in darkness. “Come see what I keep.”

They followed him down the gently curving hallway. Jack saw a good opportunity to pump the Doctor for information.

“Doc,” Jack whispered, “what’s with this place?” He gestured around. “I mean, what’s with that symbol? I’ve seen that before, I swear I have.”

The Doctor’s head tipped back to see the interlaced infinity mark at the top of the arch. He paled. His mouth opened, shut, opened…paused…then cleared his throat and tried again. “Jack, time isn’t a line.”

“I know, you’ve said that,” Jack replied, a little exasperated. “They made sure we understood all of that at the Time Agency, too.”

“Yes, but here it’s…different. It’s not even how time is supposed to be,” the Doctor gave an uncomfortable shrug.

“What do you mean?”

“Here, it’s as if time is enclosed into a circle, and we’re inside it.”

“Like a bubble?”

“No, not so fragile. Nor so… pleasant. Time here is… uncomfortable. It’s protected from outside time, but it’s not comfortable for a Time Lord to exist here.” The Doctor frowned, looking around the structure at things Jack couldn’t see or sense. “With you in here with me, it’s… even worse. You’re the ultimate temporal irritant and we’re inside together.”

“Like a pearl in an oyster?”

“…YES! You’re brilliant, Jack, yes. Like a pearl in an oyster. I never saw it in the timelines during our travels because it’s coated and protected from the outside—and, frankly, having you around tends to disrupt my temporal perceptions, everything just **bends** around you—but now that I’m inside it, all I notice is the pearl. If we hadn't been actively tracing that signal, Jack, I still wouldn't have found it.”

"That transmission came from here, though?" Jack asked. "The one in the receiver we found in Torchwood Three?"

"Yes," the Doctor replied, with reluctance.

“So, what's really wrong about this place, Doc?” Jack prodded. "You're jumpy. That makes ME jumpy."

The Doctor gave him an opaque glance and continued down the hall.


	3. The Second Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Keeper of Possibilities is leading Jack and the Doctor (10) down a hallway. The decor makes the Doctor go pale...

They followed the Keeper into a second room. To Jack, it looked like a medbay or a cryo-facility with rings of pods along the floor, up on the walls and continuing further and further up. There had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pods. The Doctor ran to one, exclaimed in a discordant language Jack didn’t know and it wasn’t translated for him. He darted over to a second, hands flying over the control boards, then lunged to a third.

Jack stepped to the nearest pod and looked down. Humanoid bodies, but he couldn’t read the circular writing on the panels. He could only see the heads and the smooth lack of facial features. He heard the Doctor’s voice burst out with another untranslated string of words—ones Jack was sure he’d last heard from under the TARDIS console in a Northern accent.

Jack had heard a number of words in what he figured must be the Doctor’s native language. The TARDIS never translated it and Jack was never sure if that was because the Time Lords were so secretive, or if there weren’t words in any other language that could cover the concepts the Time Lord language encompassed. Jack had once gone to a Arnold Schönberg concert, with all the mixes of beautiful melodies and clashing atonals, and the Doctor’s language reminded him of that whenever he heard it: beautiful and grating, exquisite and alien, all at the same time.

Meanwhile, the Doctor had rounded on the Keeper, building rage in his voice. “What have you done to them?”

“What **_are_** they?” Jack asked at the same time.

“Gallifreyans.” The Doctor gestured madly around the room. “They’re all Gallifreyans.”

“In part,” the Keeper said.

“In part?” Jack asked. “What part? They don’t even have faces!”

“No, the readings match—and this is my people’s technology. These are Gallifreyans,” the Doctor insisted. “How can you have Gallifreyans here?”

“They are Time Lord bodies, Time Lord,” the Keeper emphasized. “Not Gallifreyan. They were cloned from samples, on the orders of the Lady President.”

“Romana…” the Doctor whispered.

“Indeed,” the Keeper intoned.

“That’s how you knew who I was.”

“In part, Doctor,” the Keeper replied. “The Lady President was clear who she believed would survive the War.”

“But who are they?” Jack asked. The Doctor was strangely quiet.

“They are no one. Bodies unpopulated by consciousness. Bodies without presence.”

“Is that why they don’t have faces? Because they’re—” Jack paused,”—empty houses?”

“That’s a good way of putting it, Jack. That’s why I couldn’t sense them.” He eyed the Keeper warily. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why! Why do you have Gallifreyan bodies in stasis? Why are they empty? Why are you—why is this—all in a pearl of stable time right next to a fracture in the time-space continuum?”

“Possibilities, Doctor.”

“Yes, and you’re the Keeper of Possibilities, and you keep possible Time Lords in a possible state next to a possible temporal weakness, and _**why**_?”

“Because we have been waiting for you.”

“Waiting for him?” Jack demanded. Whenever someone said they’d been waiting for the Doctor, it was usually bad news and often involved Jack dying very messily.

“I have been left a message for you.” The Keeper pressed a button on his collar.


	4. The Message

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is shaken to receive a message from one of the few people more clever than he is.

“I have been left a message for you.” The Keeper pressed a button on his collar. “Here.” A lower panel hummed, slid upward and an odd form rolled out. The Doctor’s eyebrows rose.

“Master.”

“K9?” Jack could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen the Doctor completely flabbergasted… now he had to start a new hand.

“Affirmative, Master.”

“But E-space—“

“Mistress Romana was able to stabilize my presence when she returned with the Tharils to aid in the Time War.”

“Oh, K9.” The Doctor gave the metal dog a fond look. He crouched down and patted the robot on its back.

The dog’s head swiveled with a mechanical whine. “I have a message for you from Mistress Romana.”

The Doctor’s shoulders sunk, and he bowed his head. “Alright, K9.” He inhaled. “Alright.” He stood, closed his eyes and his mouth settled in a grim line. “Play it.”

“Affirmative, Master.” The metal dog’s antennae-ears swiveled briefly before aiming forward and emitting a beam of light. The beam turned into a wavering pillar of light and shadow, where Jack could see a humanoid shape. The Doctor pivoted on his heels to watch.

A woman’s voice floated out of the pillar, echoing and hollow. “Doctor?” It was like watching one of those movies during the Blitz, where everything flickered unevenly. But it was all tinted orange, and looked solid. The Doctor’s eyes widened as a figure in the beam of light held out its hand. “Doctor, here.” As the Doctor reached out and gripped it, the figure resolved into a woman, in full color and looking absolutely real. Absolutely real and absolutely gorgeous. How did the Doc always end up with the hot women?

“Romana,” he murmured. The woman smiled and he cleared his throat. “Lady President.”

“Oh come now, Doctor. No formality with me, of all people. When you’ve been thrown into as many jail cells together as we have—” Jack snorted and the woman grinned at him, then frowned”—then we’ve certainly passed beyond the need for titles.” She looked the Doctor up and down. “Yet another new body, Doctor? How reckless of you.”

“Some things never change,” Jack muttered.

“Indeed,” the woman replied, exchanging a knowing look with Jack, then frowned again. “What on Gallifrey is _wrong_ with you?”

“Oi!” The Doctor looked a bit huffy.

“Yes, indeed, I have little time, Doctor, so let me explain what is going on here.” She looked back over her shoulder briefly, calling, “Yes, Leela, I only need a few more moments. Have Andred delay the Castellan.” The Doctor’s face went absolutely still and Jack tried to not even breathe. This was legend come to life, right in front of his eyes. “We are losing this War, Doctor. We will lose this War. And there will be no more Time Lords. Unless you choose otherwise.”

“I can’t break the Time Lock, Romana. The universe was getting torn apart.”

“Is that what you’ll do? Good to know. I’ll try to make sure I’m locked into a pleasant moment.” She sighed. “That is why the Keeper is here. That is why I built this place, and hid it from everyone. That is why the tissue samples are here.”

“They’re full bodies. Without consciousness.”

“Adults? It’s been that long?” She sounded appalled. “What have you been doing? Never mind, I don’t have time.” She drew in a breath. “You must be our new Rassilon,” she announced. At the Doctor’s horrified look and attempts at denial, she simply spoke louder, overriding him. Good. The Doctor needed someone to ignore him on a regular basis. “You always had much to say about the problems with Time Lord society. Now you can create a new one—one that works. Build it in your image, Doctor, with your ethics, and your values.” She swayed briefly and Jack felt a shockwave ripple through the floor.

The Doctor’s eyes widened.”Romana, where are you?”

“Arcadia,” she replied tersely. “Doctor, you know thousands of beings, of peoples, whom you have influenced and trained and encouraged, with the integrity and strength of character to see what needs to be done for the universe. They have traveled with you and learned from you and thrown their lot in with your views on interference.” She pointed up at the screens above the pods. Each showed a face, some human, some not; some strange, some achingly familiar to Jack. There was Sarah Jane Smith, and Mickey and Martha, and dozens of others. “Remake us, Doctor.” Her voice dropped to an intent whisper. “Remake us into a society that does what is right, over what is traditional. Fill those bodies with those whom you would wish to see there, for the betterment of Time itself. Bor—the Keeper can help you find them, right before they die, and put them here. That temporal instability opens into multiple timelines and pocket universes. It is a doorway into almost infinite possibility.” She briefly gripped the Doctor’s hand with both of her own. “Each cell sample was accompanied by a piece of TARDIS coral. If the cells are grown to full bodies, the corals should be fully functional TARDISes by now.” She began to release the Doctor’s hand, then leaned forward and murmured. “Also, I’ve included plenty of spare parts for a Type 40. I suspect you’ll need them.” She looked down at the robotic dog. “Good boy, K9! You’ve done a very good job.” The dog wagged its tail as she released the Doctor’s hands, turning back into a flickering beam of light. Dimly, Jack could hear her say, “Welcome, Castellan Narvin, to the War Council...” before the light faded entirely.

The Doctor stared at the space where the beam of light had been. Just stared. He may not have been actually breathing. The robot dog lowered its head and its tail drooped, ear antennae drooping, too. Jack wasn’t sure the Doctor even noticed.

“Doc?” he asked, uncertainly. “That looked like a film, only… it wasn’t, really, was it?”

“What? No! No, Jack. For a brief moment—the moments of that message—she was actually here. It’s a variation of Time Lord art—oh, clever Romana!—to freeze a moment, a livable moment, a slice of time. Only she laid multiple slices over and over and over into a message—“

“—but you said she was here—“

“—yes, she left that chain of moments with K9, who held it steady here. It’s a moment of the Time War, but it’s not affecting anything because it’s inside here. Inside this pocket—this pearl, as you put it.”

“So it’s not going to open the Time War up?”

“No. It connects back—and yet it doesn’t—but she was here. Here. Even her presence in my mind was here.” The Doctor’s face worked, briefly, and his eyes flicked blindly around the room as if he were trying to find his fellow Time Lord in a shadowed corner, and Jack looked away uncomfortably. He felt like he’d crossed some unforgivable boundary, forced some intimacy. There was only one person who could handle the Doc when he was like this. And she was dead.

There was a rippling, golden glow behind them, casting their shadows on the wall, a light that, like the architecture, teased at Jack’s memory. The Doctor didn’t notice, slumped with his head bowed, his eyes staring, unseeing, into the place his fellow Time Lord had stood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are free to imagine whichever version of Romana you prefer.   
> I personally picture Romana III as Helen Mirren. YMMV.


	5. Archetypes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gallifrey never had a proper label for the Doctor. Until now.  
> He doesn't like it.

“Doctor.” The Keeper had been silent throughout the message, working on one of the stasis units, which was source of that familiar golden light. “Now you understand.”

“But I can’t!” the Doctor rounded on him. “I can’t raise an entire civilization of Time Lords! I barely passed temporal mechanics!” He glanced over at Jack. “Forget I mentioned that.”

Jack fought to keep the smirk off his face.

The Keeper sighed. “Doctor, information has already been loaded into their cortices. You do not have to teach them 6-dimensional maths, or how to read Circular Gallifreyan or how to repair their TARDISes. The Lady President wanted you to be their moral guide, not their class instructor. I am sorry to admit that she did not think much of your academic skills.”

Jack bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the offended look on the Doctor’s face.

“That being said, each cortex has an affiliation toward different skill sets. Some are more academically minded, focused on research and invention. Others have high telepathic and healing skills, for the medically inclined,” he tipped his head toward the screen above one body, which alternated between Martha’s smiling face and a curly-haired man Jack didn’t know, although he recognized the Royal Navy uniform. The Doctor’s brows snapped down. “The one across the room is canted toward temporal shielding, defensive screens, transduction barriers, a bit militaristic for my tastes, but the Lady President insisted on a full spectrum of Archetypes.” The Doctor nodded absently, clearly thinking fiercely.

“Archetypes?” asked Jack.

“That’s a Gallifreyan term for the role Time Lords were supposed to choose in life. Rather like jobs, I suppose,” the Doctor replied with a dismissive shrug.

“Such as?”

“Oh, there was Scholar, Protector, Builder, Loomer—thousands of them, really—all terribly boring.”

Jack was starting to get a little suspicious. “What was your… Archetype?”

“I didn’t have one, really.”

The Keeper looked at Jack with calm, ancient eyes as the coruscating golden light from the cryochamber flickered over his face. “The Doctor was listed under the Renegade archetype after his departure from Gallifrey, following the, ah, Borusa affair.”

“What?” the Doctor exclaimed. “There’s no Renegade Archetype!”

The Keeper looked over at the robotic dog. “Messenger, please list the members of the Renegade Archetype.” He continued to type into the keyboard in front of him.

“Affirmative, Keeper,” the little dog replied. “The Renegade Archetype was established during the Presidency of Rodan the First—“

“—Rodan! Really? Good for her!—” the Doctor beamed, golden light glinting off the sonic screwdriver he gripped in one hand.

“—and it includes Time Lords known as the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, the Corsair, Drax, the Meddling Monk—”

“The Doctor, the Master, the Corsair? Really?” Jack laughed at the Doctor’s affronted expression. “Didn’t any of you actually get names when you were born?”

“Of course we had names! We just didn’t use them.” He tipped his head over to the dog. “That’s enough, K-9.”

“Affirmative, Master.” The robot dog glided back into its alcove and the wall slid down, hiding it from view.

“The point of being a renegade Time Lord was that I didn’t fit an Archetype!” The Doctor shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “That’s what made me a renegade!”

“Are you actually… upset?” Jack turned to watch the Doctor as the Time Lord stomped around the stasis room like an unhappy toddler.

“I got labeled!” the Doctor yelled. “I’m the Doctor—I don’t fit in, I don’t match an Archetype and I certainly don’t get labeled!”

“Well, ‘renegade’ is a step up from ‘stupid ape,’ Doctor,” a woman’s voice piped up, in a broad Cockney accent.

Jack saw the Doctor’s eyes grow wide and his head whipped around.

One of the Time Lord clones was sitting up in her stasis chamber, as the Keeper removed connections from her temples. The golden glow was fading around her, the blank face resolving into blonde hair and oh-so-familiar hazel eyes, and she looked at the Doctor with a half-smile. Jack heard the Doctor’s sharp intake of air in the same moment he thought his own heart would stop.

_Rose?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rodan was a Time Lady first shown in the Fourth Doctor serial "Invasion of Time." She later appeared in the Eighth Doctor Novel "Legacy of the Daleks."  
> Her later political career, including her term as President of Gallifrey, is my own creation.


	6. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor turned furious eyes on the Keeper. “You can’t just rip her from my timestream!”

The Doctor turned furious eyes on the Keeper. “You can’t just rip her from my timestream!”

“I have not,” the Keeper replied, unruffled.

“She knows who I am!”

“This Rose Tyler is from a timeline where her parallel father had been converted by the Cybermen and perished. So when she slipped into the Void, there was no one to catch her, no one to save her. Her mind called for you, so I took her from that body and placed her here. Her mind called for you and it has been answered—with you.”

The woman with Rose’s face was gawping at the Doctor, then at the Keeper, confusion written on her features. Then Jack saw her notice him—and a smile of absolute joy spread across her face. “Jack!” she said. “I can’t believe you’re here—I thought you were dead!” She frowned. “Why do you look so **weird**?”

The Doctor didn’t say a word, so it was only Jack whose voice came out in a harsh, jagged whisper.

“Rose?”

The Doctor seemed frozen in place, so Jack pushed himself forward to help this Rose—this Rose clone, this un-strange stranger—out of the stasis pod. She was covered in some kind of semi-opaque gel, an orange color with swirling golden points of light inside. She was unsteady and awkward, like a newborn foal, her knees buckling a little as the Keeper brought forward some kind of towel or cloth to wrap her in.

“Take her to your TARDIS, Time Lord,” the Keeper said to the Doctor. “Your ship will know her for all that she is.”

Jack was surprised to see the Doctor nodding. He looked as dazed as Jack felt.

Jack held one arm around this Rose’s waist, but she was so clumsy, like she couldn’t figure out what end of her foot she was supposed to put down in what order, that he just ended up scooping her up into his arms and carrying her down the hallway to where the TARDIS was parked, in the Doctor’s footsteps. She made a noise of protest, punching Jack’s arm and insisting on being set down. Surprisingly, it actually hurt. She was stronger than Jack remembered.

The Doctor fumbled the doors open to his blue box and Jack followed, swingin Rose inside. She was struggling in his arms ’til the Doctor said, his eyes gone wide, “Rose.”

She glanced over at the Doctor. “What?”

The Doctor shook his head, then looked at her. “The TARDIS knows you’re actually Rose.” He drew in a huge breath, then blew it out in a puff of lips. “You’re actually Rose Tyler.”

She shifted her glare from Jack to the Doctor. “Well, yeah, duh,” she snapped. “Jack, put me down!”

The Doctor was starting to smile—grin, even—when he said, “Let me help you to your room. You could probably use a bath.” Rose looked down at herself and her nose wrinkled up in that so-familiar way Jack remembered, as she took in the orange biogel that covered her body and coated her hair into lank strips.

“Yeah,” she replied. “That’d be good. I got slimed!”

And the Doctor wrapped an arm around Rose’s waist, maneuvering her through the doorway, unconcerned about the biogel that was getting smeared on his suit. Jack swallowed and stepped back out into the hallway of the time pearl. He needed to have some words with the Keeper.


	7. Game On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack has a little chat with the Keeper of Possibilities.

Jack walked back through the facility, looking for the Keeper. He noticed other doorways off the hallway to the second room—had they been there, earlier? Or was this place like the TARDIS, opening doors when it felt like it?

He entered the stasis chamber and saw the Keeper working on another pod. Jack recognized the faces on the screen--two men in military uniforms from the Doctor’s time at UNIT: Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates.

“He’ll eventually forgive you for dragging Rose out of his timestream, because he’s so hot for her he can’t stand it,” Jack said, “but if you start yanking people out of his past that he **_doesn’t_** want to fuck, he’s going to shut you down so fast your head will spin.”

“I’m quite aware of the Doctor’s tendencies, Fixed Point,” the Keeper replied. “Whether or not you phrase them in such an indelicate way.”

Jack walked over to the pod and leaned against it. “Yeah, you would,” he said. “Time Lord.”

The Keeper’s head turned slowly and he met Jack’s gaze, eyes narrowing. “Time… Agent?” he said, more statement, really than question.

Jack uncrossed his arms and slowly applauded. “So how come he can’t feel you?” Jack asked, tapping his temple with an index finger.

The Keeper frowned at him.

“He went insane, you know,” Jack said, cheerfully, “after the Master refused to regenerate.” The Keeper’s eyes widened. “Oh, you didn’t know the Master survived the Time War? To quote your Lady President, _‘What have you been doing?’_ You know who Martha and Mickey are, so you must have been keeping up with what’s been happening to the Doc, in order to spring this little surprise on him?”

“How do you think you got your beacon, Fixed Point?” the Keeper hissed at him. “Though you did your best to have it destroyed along with the rest of your inferior technology and inferior species.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, you’re a Time Lord.” He looked the Keeper up and down. “I recognize the insults: first the Master, then Rassilon”—the Keeper’s face went slack—“yeah, your whole species only knows how to be a dick.” He stood up. “And I came here to make a deal with you, Time Lord”—

—“you must not”—

—“tell the Doctor that you’re a Time Lord?” Jack smirked and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Really? What’s in it for me? It’s not like you can kill me to shut me up, I annoy the fuck out of you just by existing” —the Keeper’s mouth made a little _moue_ of distaste—“and if you try to dump me somewhere, the Doc’s gonna hunt you down and break you for it.”

Jack could practically see the wheels turning in that creaky old head. “You make a number of cogent points,” the Keeper said. “Let us negotiate.”

“Oh really? And what was **your** Archetype, Keeper?”

The old eyes flicked up to his as a smile curled one end of equally old lips. “Politician.”

Jack snorted. _All right, then. Game on._


	8. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose makes some startling personal discoveries... while in the bath.

She couldn’t help it. She screamed.

The Doctor burst into her bathroom, disheveled and alarmed. “Rose!” He pulled her from the bathwater and clutched her to his chest, cradling her head. “Rose, what is it?” She looked up at him, terror alternating with embarrassment, chasing away the vestiges of the fantasy she had been using in the bath.

“Doctor, there’s something attached to me,” she whispered, “down there, you know, yeah?”

“Down—” he glanced at her torso, his ears pinking, as he dropped her on the bed. “Rose Tyler, what were you doing?”

It was Rose’s turn to blush. “Oh, just washing, you know, and…” She couldn’t meet his eyes.

The Doctor started to laugh. It sounded slightly hysterical, which was weird because the Doctor never got hysterical. Manic, yeah, and angry, sure, but hysterical?

“It’s not funny, Doctor,” she snapped and clutched the duvet up to her chest. “There’s this thing attached to my body, right down, you know, here, and it’s like—” Rose felt down her body. “Hey, it’s gone!”

The Doctor laughed more.

“It’s not funny.”

“No,” he replied, finally running out of laughter. “What did I tell you about sex with aliens, when I first brought you on board?”

“Don’t have it.”

“Exactly.” He stared at her, cocking an eyebrow like a schoolmaster.

“I didn’t!”

“Rose, you did.”

“I didn’t. How can you even say that?” she snapped.

He leaned forward. “Because, Rose, right now, **you’re** the alien.”

“What?”

He sighed and sat on the mattress next to her and leaned back against the headboard, one leg canted up on the bed, the other dangling over the edge to the floor. “In many ways, Rose, Time Lord and human biology are similar, or even identical.” He licked his lips before continuing in a way that made her think of a class lecture. “Reproductive biology is not one of those ways.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you saying Time Lords have different… bits?”

He laughed nervously. “Yes.” He tapped his long fingers on his thigh before jumping up and pacing back and forth across her room. “Gallifrey has—had—a harsh environment, almost desert-like by Earth standards, and Gallifreyans evolved several reproductive strategies to ensure the propagation of the species. There were actually two separate lines of strategy—one by the males and one by the females—that developed and interacted. What you noticed, uhm, in your bath, was part of the female reproductive strategy.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Are you giving me the Time Lord version of The Talk?”

“The what?”

“The birds and the bees and all that, yeah?”

He scratched the back of his head. “Hm. Yes. I suppose.”

“You mean that… thing… that I’ve got down there is… normal?”

He huffed a sigh of relief. “For a Gallifreyan female, yes.”

“How can that be normal?”

“I—it’s—there’s a… I need to get you a book.”

She laughed, with a sense of disbelief. “A book?”

“It’ll have pictures.”

“A book on Time Lord bits?” she exclaimed shakily. “With pictures?!?” She was beginning to understand why the Doctor was laughing that way.

The Doctor looked cornered, and a bit shifty. “It’s very helpful.” He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and peered around her room. “They gave it to everyone when you entered the Academy.”

“A Time Lord schoolbook on your bits.” She couldn’t believe he had a schoolbook about his bits—and that he’d kept the thing.

“ **Your** bits.”

“Well, I assume it’ll also have pictures of yours,” she snapped back. Then she realized how that sounded. “I mean, men’s bits. Male Time Lord-y bits. Not **your** actual bits.” She was suddenly very aware of his bits—his everything, really. His tie was gone and his shirt was completely open down and hanging untucked, and his trousers weren’t buttoned at the top, like he’d been going to get into his own bath. She could see, with a tingling awareness, each hair on his chest and how they trailed down his front, scattered around his navel, and thickened again to lead into his trousers, and the black line of his pants peeking out past the unbuttoned waistline of his trousers sitting lower on his hips without a belt. The watermarks on his shirt where he’d held her body against his blared out at her like beacons. His body had been touching hers there, only thin cotton between them. He looked incredible. He smelled incredible. She could smell him from here. She could hear his heartsbeat from here and she felt something flutter deep inside…

“Rose, stop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've liked some of the ideas other writers have generated with regards to Gallifreyan/Time Lord sexuality. But in many ways, I wasn't sure it went far enough. And few have discussed female Gallifreyan biology, so most of it I have made up myself.


	9. The Agenda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack knew there was an agenda here, if not more than one. That lady Time Lord had one. This Keeper guy had one. For all Jack knew, that robot dog had one, too.

“You are”—the Keeper hesitated slightly—“not as brash as I assumed you would be.”

“I’m two thousand Earth-years old,” Jack drawled back. “I’ve learned a little patience.”

“So it seems. The Doctor will want time with his”—the Keeper fumbled for a word—“paramour before he returns here to make his choices for the rest of my charges.”

Jack crossed his arms and frowned. “The Doc’s not really uptight, compared to the rest of you guys, is he?” Jack shook his head. “And here I thought he was repressed. You guys are repressed. He’s just a virgin.”

“He was never well controlled, by himself or by others,” the Keeper rasped. “Not even for his own good.”

Despite the temptation that floated through his head, Jack set himself to just absorb the information he was getting. He’d have time later to ponder and process it. Right now, he had to be a sponge, and suck up everything he could get. Because there was an agenda here, if not more than one. That lady Time Lord had one. This Keeper guy had one. For all Jack knew, that robot dog had one, too.

“So what do you want from him?” Jack laid it out bluntly. “And not the bullshit answer, either,” he amended.

The Keeper tried an innocent look. It didn’t work on Jack. “Did you not hear the Lady President? The Doctor must choose his fellow Time Lords. Then my duties will be discharged and I can rest.”

“Ah,” Jack replied, knowingly, “thirteenth life and you’re just so damned tired.” He wondered if the Keeper would be able to hear the sarcasm.

The wintry smile the Keeper gave him said he heard it loud and clear. “I wasn’t always allowed to die, Fixed Point. It will be a relief to finally not-be, as well you should know.”

“Why don’t you just try to find out?” asked Jack, tapping his temple with two fingers. “I’m not from a telepathic race. You could just bully in and take a look.”

The Keeper looked appalled. “That’s immoral.”

“Only if I say ‘No’ and you do it anyway,” Jack replied. “And I never said ‘No.’”

The Keeper turned back to the pod, sorting through faces both familiar and unfamiliar to Jack, finally settling on a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy in yellow, with a blue star on his shirt. “Is that why he can’t hear you?” Jack demanded. “You don’t have telepathic abilities anymore? Those centers were burnt out, weren’t they?”

The Keeper’s sudden stillness told Jack more than he thought he’d learn and left him with even more questions.


	10. The Birds and the Bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and cleared his throat again. “It’s Gallifreyan biology.” His voice was rough and strained.

“Rose, stop.”

Rose jerked her eyes up to his face. His eyes were dark and he was breathing deeply, nostrils flaring, with a white-knuckled grip on the footboard of her bed. _He can smell me, too,_ she thought.

“Rose, you’ve got to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop thinking about me that way, right now. It’s not a good idea.”

_No, it wasn’t a good idea, it was a great idea. Thinking about him this way sounded like the best idea she’d had in a long time. She could practically taste his desire for her..._

“Stop it, Rose!” he yelled and slammed his hands down on the footboard.

It startled her and she jerked back against the headboard. She shook her head. He was right. _This was weird._ What was wrong with her? She’d been horny before, sure, with Jimmy and Mickey and even the Doctor—both of him—and she knew what that was like, but this was… not normal. She tried to sound normal, though. “What’s going on? That was—that was weird.”

He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and cleared his throat again. “It’s Gallifreyan biology.” His voice was rough and strained.

“But I liked you, uhm, that way, back then, too, yeah?” she said. “And it wasn’t like this.”

“Humans aren’t capable of reproducing the biochemistry of Gallifreyan lifeforms. A human’s hormones and pheromones are similar to a Gallifreyan’s—and humans are a remarkably receptive and adaptable species when it comes to things like this, you only have to see how Jack is to understand that—so a human female could respond to Gallifreyan pheromones but wouldn’t generate pheromones that I would respond to.”

“So, it’s like a radio. We stupid apes can hear you, but you can’t hear us, yeah?”

He smiled at her. “Close.” His smile faded. “Only now, we can hear each other, so it’s more like a phone call. Because you’re not human anymore.”

“I feel human.”

“Then why aren’t you cold?”

“It’s warm in here.”

“It’s 10 degrees Celsius in here.”

“What?”

“Your consciousness is still human, Rose,” the Doctor told her, gently, as he leaned over and braced his forearms upon the curving footboard of her bed. “But your brain isn’t. Your body isn’t. And you need to know what’s different before you hurt yourself or someone else.”

“So no aspirin, yeah?”

“Absolutely not.” His sounded horrified.

The Doctor hadn’t ever really discussed his body—except for all his bragging about how much better it was than a human’s body. She knew about the two hearts and the bypass breathing thing, and the aspirin, of course, but there was so much she didn’t know. And if she had a Time Lord body, too… She gnawed on her lower lip, tracing patterns on the duvet. “Can you find me that book?”

“I’ll go check the Library.” He turned to leave. He was moving very carefully.

“Doctor?”

He looked back over his shoulder.”Hm?”

“I’m sorry.” At his startled look, she stumbled on, in a small voice, “I was doing something that hurt you, I can see that, and I didn’t know it and I’m really sorry.” She glanced up at him. He’d rocked back on his heels and half-turned back to her, one hand on her doorknob, one hand in his trouser pocket. “I don’t ever want to hurt you.” She could feel tears clogging her throat and fought them down. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, Rose,” he said. “We’re both learning.” He drew in a breath, like he was going to say something else, but just shook his head and left, closing the door behind him.

Rose was very business-like, finishing her bath, though she noticed that there were other oddities with her new body. There was something wrong with her ribs, they bulged out and felt awkward. Her flannel, which she always thought so soft, was a little scratchy. And there was something else going on with her… bits… besides that… thing. After she got back into her bedroom, she discovered the book laying on the foot of her bed, with a bookmark in it. She tried to put on her favorite pair of jeans from her wardrobe but discovered that she couldn’t wear anything that tight anymore. That thing… spot… that was down there got chafed (and wasn’t that uncomfortable?). Loose trousers it was, then.

She sat on the bed, back against the headboard, opened the book at the bookmark and started to read.


	11. Simple Induction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, Keeper," Jack asked, "who’d you piss off?”

The room was silent as the Keeper moved from pod to pod, dialing in on different faces, some familiar to Jack, some not. Jack nodded to himself. The Doctor’s habits of avoidance and flight weren’t just personal—they were cultural. Never talk about it directly. Avoid, divert, reject.

“Who’d you piss off?”

The Keeper favored him with that same politician smile: thin and dry and unpromising. “How did you know I was a Time Lord, rather than a mere Gallifreyan?”

“I asked first.”

Jack’s denial seemed to get some blood pumping through the old bird—his eyes sparked a little and his movements were less dreamy, more direct, as he worked on the pods. The Keeper pulled a lever and the pods rotated from top to bottom, bringing a whole new grouping down onto the floor. “A legend. I made a legend very angry. He had his revenge. And then he had it twice.”

An answer. Vague, but the Doctor would probably understand it. Jack wondered how to pump him for answers without tipping him off tha—oh, yeah. Rose. Rose the Time Lord. She’d be full of questions. He could get her to ask the Doctor, who loved to go on and on about anything, but especially to go on and on to Rose. Yeah, that’d work.

“How did you know I was a Time Lord, Fixed Point?” the Keeper interrupted his thoughts, somewhat impatiently.

“That,” Jack said.

“Explain.”

“What do you keep calling me?”

“You are a Fixed Point. No living being should be an Event in the timelines. Even the living piece of the Key to Time put forth no ripples as you do.”

“That’s exactly how I knew.”

The Keeper’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ve met other time-sensitive species since the Game Station,” Jack replied, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back on the wall. “Only you guys call me names with that slightly nauseated look on your faces. Even your Lady President did it, **from inside a Time Lock**.” Jack grinned. “When five people look at you with the same expression on their faces—and you know that four of them are Time Lords…” he let the words trail off, then shrugged. “Let’s just say I walked to my conclusion instead of jumping to it.”

The Keeper nodded. “Simple induction.”

Jack smirked. “Actually, I’m pretty impressed. I made the Master throw up for two days in a row until he got used to me. As far as I can tell, you haven’t chucked up once.”

“The Master never mastered himself—he was undisciplined,” the Keeper muttered, then frowned. “Except in the telepathic control and manipulation classes, to give him proper credit. He always did excel at those.”

The Keeper was being quite forthcoming. Jack wondered if he could get some more dirt on the Doc. The Keeper had hemmed-and-hawed around the Doctor’s questions before distracting him with a Time Lord version of Rose, so this Keeper guy probably knew more than he was saying and he was probably saying more than he meant to. Even Time Lords must get bored and lonely. So Jack decided to go for the gold.

“So what was his own good?” Jack asked. “When you tried to control the Doc and found out he wasn’t controllable? Whose plan did that upset?”

The Keeper pursed his lips dryly. “Everyone’s plan.”

“Who was everyone?”

“Goth’s. The Master’s. The Rani’s. Braxiatel’s. Salyavin’s. Rassilon’s”—he sniffed derisively. “Mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goth is from "The Deadly Assassin." The Master, the Rani and Rassilon are well-known enemies of the Doctor. Braxiatel is the name given for the Doctor's brother. Salyavin is from "Shada."


	12. The Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose discovers some new words for new parts of her biology: kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak), shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL), filakha (fih-LAHK-ah) and temekarn (TEM-eh-karn).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time Lord reproductive biology is alien.

Rose closed the book. And the notebook she’d been using to list her questions.

Now that had been weird. Oh, alright, everything about this was weird, but that was especially weird. Alright, weird didn’t really cover this anymore, but what else could she call it? She could understand this book. It was in Gallifreyan, that same circles-and-lines-and-dots writing that the Doctor always used on the TARDIS’s screens and the TARDIS never translated and she could never understand and now she could read it, actually read it and some of it actually made sense.

Apparently, the… thing… she had was called a **_shakaral_**. _I wonder if that’s a naughty word,_ she thought, grinning to herself. The book was so cold about it, like listening to the school nurse. Mickey had spoken more warmly about some cars he’d worked on, so she had her suspicions. She’d have to drop it into conversation with the Doctor and see how he reacted. Because she had a lot of questions to go along with the suspicions. As a Time Lord—well, Time **Lady** , the book said—she had other bits that humans didn’t have besides the **_shakaral_** and the book talked about them but it didn’t say anything about what they were actually **for**. Rose didn’t know how Time Lords had kids if everybody knew what the bits were for but assumed that nobody was going to ever use them. Rose focused on the inside of her body. She could actually feel all of her internal organs, like her hearts beating, her lungs pulling in air, even her gallbladder producing bile. Wait—those were her kidneys.

 _Why the hell do I have four kidneys?_ The answer popped into her head, before she even finished asking herself the question. It sounded like a snooty professor:

 

> **In Gallifreyans, all vital systems are duplicated. One pair of kidneys filters waste from the blood in the left cardial system, the other pair filters the right cardial system.**

Alright, then, she had two hearts—yep, she could feel them _beating out a samba!_ —and two sets of arteries and veins and things, one for each heart. She could feel everything, it seemed like. She could even feel the air recycling in her own bedroom, as it passed across her skin! No wonder the Doctor twitched every time she’d touched him.

She thought her way up her own body. _This is so **weird**._ So that **_shakaral_** thing, there it was, just waiting under the skin on the rim of her, uhm,

 

> **vaginal orifice** , the professor inside her head added, with the word _**kamdarak**. _

**_Kamdarak_** , she knew, was like **_shakaral_** —it was a word from the Doctor’s language. She thought about the Doctor, about the smell of his skin and his long-fingered agile hands, and could feel the skin tighten around the opening and the **_shakaral_** start to swell.

_Oh. So that’s how it works._

She turned her mind inward even more. She could sense the inside of her own _—her mind turned for a moment with remnants of romance novels she’d read from Mum’s secret stash and things like “womanhood” and “wet heat” bubbled up into her thoughts_ —her own, uhm,

 

> **vagina** , the professor-in-her-head added and—

What the hell?!? _Tentacles? I’ve got tentacles?_

 

> **Cilia** , the professor inside her head corrected, adding the Gallifreyan word **_filakha_**.

Okay, not tentacles. Just tentacle-ish. Sort of tentacles. Like those flower things under the ocean—

 

> **_anenomes_** , the professor-in-her-head popped up

—they were sort of like that. As long as she didn’t have a cartoon fish in there, she’d be alright. _The Doctor wasn’t kidding when he said his people’s sex lives weren’t like human sex lives,_ she thought. _I’ve got little sort-of tentacles in my cu—uhm, twa—uhm, **vagina**._

Now, the Doctor's schoolbook said she had this other organ that she could actually move around—

 

> **_temekarn_** , the professor added, and—

_Oh._

“Wow,” she whispered. She flexed it, over and over: open, shut; open, shut; open, shut. This part was kind of fun, actually. More than those Kegels her mum’d had her doing for years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, this isn't tentacle porn.  
> Yes, comments are welcome.


	13. Communicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things between Jack and the Keeper are starting to come to a head.

“You made the mistake of crossing the Doctor?”

“I made the mistake of thinking I could use him,” the Keeper smiled that thin, dry smile. “Just as you will make the mistake of thinking you can use him for answers to all the questions I am giving you.”

Jack shrugged. “You could give me the answers now, or I could just ask the Doc questions that would tip him off.”

The Keeper whirled to glare at Jack. “You must not!” he hissed, and grabbed at a cryo-pod for balance.

“Why not?” Jack shot back, more a challenge than a question. The Keeper tried to stare him down. Jack wasn’t having it. After Abaddon, he wasn’t impressed. After Gray killed Tosh, he’d done his bleeding. And after waking up to Ianto’s blue-lipped, still face, he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. The only ones left to hurt that could hurt Jack were Rose and the Doctor, and the Keeper wasn’t going to touch a hair on their heads.

“There must be Time Lords!”

“Yeah,” Jack shrugged. “You’d be number three.”

“The Doctor must not know!”

“Why,” Jack growled.

“Nothing must stand in the way of the rebirth of the Time Lords! Time itself needs us!”

“So?”

“He will not do it if he knew I am involved!” The Keeper was actually spitting in rage, Jack noted. He hoped the old bird wouldn’t burst a blood vessel from this.

“So. Who. Are. You.”

The Keeper visibly calmed himself. “One of the Doctor’s tutors. And not one he was fond of.”

Jack smirked. He couldn’t help himself and asked, “So how much of a pain in the ass was the Doctor as a kid?”

The Keeper snorted. “He was a brilliant disappointment to his House, his wife’s House, his instructors and his offspring.”

“But not his granddaughter.”

The Keeper’s eyes lifted to meet Jack’s own, wide and wary. “How”—

Jack just grinned. The Companions’ Club was really paying off. He couldn’t wait to tell Sarah Jane and the Chestertons about this. “The Doctor’s travelled with a lot of us humans over the years,” he said, “and, unlike Time Lords, we’ve learned to actually communicate.” The Keeper’s disdainful twist of mouth prompted him to add, “Since we don’t have telepathy.” Jack put his hands on the top of the pod the Keeper was working on. “Something you might consider since you don’t have telepathy any more, either.” The Keeper kept steadily working, acting as if Jack hadn’t said a word.

_Stupid Gallifreyan culture._

“I said,” Jack continued, gripping the Keeper’s wrists across the next cryopod, “you might want to start communicating before I start talking to the Doctor about you.”

The Keeper twisted his arms and easily wrenched one wrist out of Jack’s grasp. The other remained in Jack’s tightening grip. He sighed. “Very well, Fixed Point,” the old Time Lord said. “What do you know of Rassilon’s Final Sanction?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who do not know about the Doctor's granddaughter, please look up "Susan Foreman."


	14. Big Time Lord Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Rose, if you want to read a book about what it’s like to be a human dropped into a Gallifreyan body, you’re going to have to write it yourself. Because there’s no one like you. You’re the first. You’re unprecedented.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
> tekhu (TEKK-hoo)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
> kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
> shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
> temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

“Doctor?”

The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS’s spatial geometer to see Rose in the doorway of the console room. Jack had marched back in, delivered a message from the Keeper, and headed off to his bedroom. _To sleep_ , he’d told the Time Lord, with complete honesty. _I may be immortal, Doc, but I still do better with a few hours of shut-eye._ “Hullo, Rose. Sleep wel—sorry.”

“Yeah, that not sleeping thing is kinda weird. I tried but I wasn’t even tired.” She was looking around the room uncertainly, and the Doctor thinned his mental shields carefully. _::Discomfort.:: ::Anxiety.::_ “Why did you redecorate?”

“I haven’t.”

Her face turned to his. “But it looks so different!”

“You can see more colors now,” he explained carefully. “Gallifreyan vision extends into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra. Humans don’t actually have names for all the colors you can see with your current vision.”

“So that sort of purply-grey orangey glowy color that’s across the ceiling?”

“ ** _Tekhu_**.”

“Oh, **that’s** **_tekhu_**?” she repeated. He could feel interest from her now. _::Curiosity.::_ “That’s neat. I can see a totally new color! I didn’t even know it was there.”

“It was always there,” he smiled at her.

“Not to me,” she smiled back at him, tongue poking between her teeth in that way he found so very, very appealing. Too appealing, by far.

“True enough.”

Her emotions shifted like mercury and she handed him the book he’d found for her. She had a small notebook in her other hand, with a pencil over one ear. _::Discomfort,::_ “Uhm, thanks for the book.”

He took it, slowly. “You can read the rest of it, you know.”

“Oh, I read it,” she said. “That’s what took me so long, yeah?”

“Rose, it’s only been three hours.”

“What?” _::Confusion.::_ Well, that made sense at least. She wasn’t the only one confused by this scenario. “I don’t read that fast.”

“It was only a chapter.”

 _::Irritation.::_ ” No, I read the whole thing,” she replied. “But that’s crazy. I don’t read that fast, especially something that complicated.” She was shaking her head. “In a foreign language, I mean, an alien language, too!”

“You do now,” he told her, then leaned over and tapped his index finger on her forehead. “Big Time Lord brain. You just have to learn how to use all of it. Looks like you’ve already gotten started—you had no problems reading Gallifreyan. All 59 tenses.”

 _::Frustration.::_ ”Right then. I’ve got some questions,” she said, folding back the cover of the notebook she held and reaching up to grab the pencil. “’Cause you know, that book has got a lot of words and labels, but not much about what anything’s for.” She huffed. “I mean, it didn’t even talk to me about colors!”

“It was written for people who were formed and raised Gallifreyan, Rose, not… immigrants.”

She looked over at him and laughed. Startled laughter. He could feel it popping up in her mind and thinned his shields more. Laughter had been rare on Gallifrey. If Romana had been serious in her plans… that was something he could change, and would change, because it desperately needed to change.

“Immigrants,” she laughed again, and the Doctor soaked it in delightedly. “Did Gallifrey ever actually have immigrants?”

He smiled at her amusement, on her face and in his head. “Rarely. But they did happen.” He felt the smile fade from his face. “Rose, if you want to read a book about what it’s like to be a human dropped into a Gallifreyan body, you’re going to have to write it yourself. Because there’s no one like you. You’re the first. You’re unprecedented.”

She stared at him. Her face was unreadable and her mind was… such a mix of emotions, all flashing by so quickly he couldn’t parse one out from another. Until one emerged. _::Determination.::_ Ah, there was the Rose he knew.

“All right then, I will,” she said. “It’ll help the other ones, yeah?”

The other ones. He had ideas for populating the other Archetypes in the time pearl. The Protector Archetype…he wondered if he could convince the Brigadier to accept it. The idea of having his longest-standing human friend with him for millennia was so, so tempting. And Alistair was a good man, for all that he’d been military so much of his life. Eventually he’d retired and had the chance to make his own methods and he’d shown remarkable flexibility. After working with the Brigadier post-UNIT, the Doctor had often wondered how much of Alistair’s adherence to “shoot first, ask questions later” had been the requirements of his military position and not his personal inclination.

“Doctor?”

“Sorry, Rose, yes.” He shook off his thoughts. Later. He’d return to that later. After Rose showed how the process would work. And it was so typically her, to think of others the way she did. “Ask away.”

“Alright then, what’s a **_shakaral_** for, actually?”

The Doctor felt himself blush from the sternum up for the first time since the Academy. And slammed his shields to full strength.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan has 59 verb tenses, according to the fantastically talented DoctorMulder. With DM's kind permission, I have stolen that thought and used it here.


	15. Too Many Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack has a lot to think about. And no way to get answers, except...

Jack had immediately dropped off to sleep, but his hyperactive brain wouldn’t let him stay that way. There were just too many question—and too many answers—that he had to admit, the Doctor shouldn’t know yet. Although, unlike the Keeper, Jack thought the Doc eventually deserved to know what was going down here.

Jack sighed as he lay in his bed. For all the answers and logical reasons the Keeper gave him, he had noticed there were some things the Keeper kept talking around. Topics obliquely referenced.

Like why the Doctor wouldn’t want to help restore his own people if he found out who the Keeper was. He wasn’t the Master, that much Jack knew. There was always this aura surrounding the Master—even when he was Harold Saxon—this miasma that gave Jack a headache. The Keeper just frustrated the hell outta him.

Jack hadn’t heard most of the conversation among the Doctor, the Master and the re-appearing Time Lords at the Naismith mansion. He’d just noticed the Doctor gripping that gun tightly and was debating whether to run over to the White Star diamond and smash it himself when the Doctor had yelled and the Master had hit the floor.

_Back to hell, indeed._

What happened to that Lady President who had been the Doctor’s friend and planned for the destruction of her planet and her people… to get replaced by the completely crazy Rassilon? The Keeper refused to say. Jack guessed he could safely ask the Doc about that. In fact, if he didn’t ask him about that hot, hot woman… the Doc might think Jack was losing his touch.

The Keeper’s Archetype hadn’t been Politician, Jack suspected, so much as Bureaucrat. He had the whole _If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit_ thing down pat.

And the Keeper hemmed and hawed and downright ignored Jack’s invitations to explain why the Time Lord was the one doing this. Jack hated to play the “I’ll ask the Doctor, then” card repeatedly, but it was the only thing that forced the Keeper to answer a direct question:

 

> _“So why you? If you’re such a problem to the Doctor, why didn’t your Lady President get someone else to do this?” Jack had asked. “Someone who the Doctor would have liked, who wouldn’t have to hide things from him.”_
> 
> _The Keeper’s eyes flicked over to him, and flicked away._
> 
> _“Because you’re gonna regret it later,” Jack had continued. “Keeping secrets from the Doctor just tends to piss him off.”_
> 
> _The Keeper snorted. “I do not fear him. His” —the Keeper’s breath hitched—“morality and his particular brand of nonsense will prevent another such as Rassilon from arising. With the Doctor as our new Founder, we shall be erratic and non-conformist and so woven through the tapestry of Time that we cannot be erased by merely removing our planet from time.”_
> 
> _He wheezed, leaning on the cryo-pod. “That was our mistake. We only watched, so we had little effect on the web of Time. But Time itself protected the Doctor, because he was too much a part of it. End his past, and you end the universe. The new Time Lords shall be in his image, so they will be the same: end them, and end the universe. And we shall be thus protected, inside and out.”_
> 
> _Jack stared. “Dropping your kids in a reed basket and floating them downstream, so they get raised by a princess.”_
> 
> _The Keeper quirked a brow and resumed his work on the cryo-pod._

It wasn’t until he gotten back to his room that Jack realized he’d never gotten the answer to his question: Why was the Keeper the one to do this job? Why HIM? Why this old tutor of the Doctor’s who had to hide who he was? Who feared that the Doctor would deny the return of the Time Lords just because the Keeper was involved? Who the hell was he? And why was he so afraid? Because hide it behind rage all he wanted, Jack knew it was fear.

And how could Jack learn more? Because the more questions he put away, the more rose up in his—

_Rose._

In his dim room, Jack’s mouth stretched into a grin.

 


	16. Time Lord Puberty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, excuse me for never going through Time Lord puberty!” she yelled back as she jumped to her feet.

Rose stared. She didn’t know the Doctor could even blush like that. She started to laugh, which just made him glare at her. That made her laugh harder.

“Sorry, Doctor,” she managed to get out. “I just—I’ve never seen you do that.” She sat down on the captain’s chair, set her notebook on her lap and tried to feel like a good student. She bit her tongue so she wouldn’t snicker any more.”You said that humans and Time Lords have different bits. So finish your lecture on the birds and the bees, yeah?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I mentioned that Gallifrey was desert-like by Earth standards, right?” She nodded. “Well, male and female Gallifreyans developed different reproductive strategies so that the species would survive. The _shakaral_ is the first part of the female reproductive strategy; the other is _temekarn_ —on Earth, that’d be embryonic diapause.”

“Embry-what?”

He sighed and rubbed his face. “Embryonic diapause. On Gallifrey, sometimes the conditions our ancestors lived under were too harsh for reproduction. Gallifreyan biomes were vastly unstable. Lots of droughts and such. The advent of weather technology was a major stepping stone in creating a stable planetwide society. It was topped only by creating the biodomes. Now the largest dome was over the Panoptican, of course—”

“Doctor…”

“Uhm, yes. So when a Gallifreyan female found a male she, uhm, preferred to reproduce with, she would engage in _temekarn_.”

“Oh! The book said that’s that pocket thing inside me! I can actually move it, you know, it opens and shuts—I can feel it—it’s really weird.” She flexed it a few times. It was the **weirdest** thing.

The Doctor swallowed, licked his lips and continued. “Now, on Earth, embryonic diapause shows up in weasels and marsupials and bears—”

“—weasels and marsupials and bears, oh my—”

“—oh my, yes!” He flashed her a nervous smile and edged around to a further section of the TARDIS console. “That was always one of the best films, really, you humans, only you’re not a human anymore, I suppose, so I should say the humans—”

“Doctor,” Rose warned.

“Yes, quite. So the ancient Gallifreyans would, uhm, engage in reproductive activities—”

“—have sex?”

“—call it that, certainly, and the females would retain the, uhm, fluids in their _temekarn_ and wait for better conditions.”

“Like when the drought was over?” she asked tentatively.

“Exactly!” Relief flooded his face.

Rose thought about that a little while the Doctor edged further away around the TARDIS console. She scribbled some notes. “Alright, so the _temekarn_ is the pouch and it’s also using the pouch. It means both things.” The Doctor was intensely studying the monitor on the far side of the console. “Doctor, is that right?”

He looked up at her, smiled and never met her eyes. “Uhm, yes, quite right,” he chirped at her and looked quickly down at the console again.

“Alright, so, what does the _shakaral_ do, actually? I mean, they have it on the pictures, but they never really say what it’s **for**.”

The Doctor turned pink again, then grabbed the book he’d loaned her and flipped through the pages. He handed it to her. Their fingertips brushed and he jerked his hand away. He’d opened the book to a graphic of the male Time Lord reproductive system—one she’d found particularly interesting and a little embarrassing at the same time, ’cause she couldn’t help but imagine what **his** looked like in comparison to the picture—and he pointed at a spot somewhere around what (on a human) would have been between the penis and the testes. But he didn’t have either like human males did. His, like hers, was all internal.

And oh how she’d stared at that picture, showing the male Gallifreyan reproductive system. There were images of it “unaroused and sealed” as well as “aroused and breached,” and how she’d wondered… although it did explain a lot about how she never felt anything happening in his trousers whenever they had to share a tight space or a bed. Most of it was happening as internally as it was happening with her.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “There’s a nerve cluster there that encourages the, uhm, release of fluids. The **_shakaral_** presses there and, uhm, does some encouraging.” Rose could see his hand was shaking a bit. “But it only emerges when the female is with a male she wishes to reproduce with.”

Rose laughed. “So faking it’s right out? Guys can tell—I mean, Time Lord guys could tell?”

“Gallifreyan males can always tell.”

“Men always think they can,” she answered coyly, enjoying the fall into their old repartee. “But they’re so, so wrong.”

The Doctor stepped closer and loomed over Rose, standing so near she could smell his skin. “Oh, we can,” he said, softly, almost growling. He leaned forward, putting his hands on the back of the chair, one to either side of her head, their faces almost touching. “Just who were you thinking about in that bath, Rose Tyler, that your **_shakaral_** came out?”

Every time she inhaled, she breathed in the scent of his skin. Of him. “You,” she whispered. “It’s always you I think about.” Their faces were so close she could see when he understood what she said, could see it in his eyes as they turned dark and hungry and how his eyes lidded as he tasted the scent of her skin—and then also see his face when he realized what was going on. He jerked upright and stumbled backward into the console. She gripped the arms of the captain’s chair, to keep from following him and tore her eyes away. The console room was silent except for their rapid breathing and the quiet hum of the TARDIS herself.

“Sorry,” she said in tight voice.

“No,” the Doctor coughed. “My fault. Shouldn’t have asked that.”

There was silence.

Finally, Rose could feel her heart, no both her hearts, finally calming down. “Can we finish this?”

The Doctor looked over at her. “I don’t think it’s a safe topic, Rose.”

“Oi, do you want to write that chapter?” she snapped.

He stared at her. Something in her head buzzed. That’s if a handful of warm, liquid blue could buzz. Or maybe it was purring. It was hard to tell. “You’re really going to do it,” he said, in a voice of faint wonder.

“Well, yeah!” she replied. “I won’t have to have this conversation with anybody else.” She hugged the notebook to her chest. “It’s bad enough that I have to have it all. And with you, of all people!”

“What’s wrong with me, of all people?” he jerked his head back, stung.

“I already feel stupid enough. You don’t need to see me being even more stupid,” she said. “There’s so much in my head and I don’t even really understand it.” She gestured to the console. “I could rebuild your helmic regulator using a box of safety pins, my smartphone and a victrola, but I don’t really understand why it’s important!”

The Doctor’s expression softened. “Rose, you’re adapting remarkably well. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Time Lords weren’t considered adults until they were at least 120, you know. You’ve got years to go.”

“I’m not a kid!”

“No,” the Doctor murmured. “Physically, you’re not. Mentally, you’re an adult by the definition of your prior species. But intellectually, you’re about a century deficient as a Time Lord. You’ve never had to apply any of the Gallifreyan information that’s in your head.”

“I’m trying to!”

“And of course you had to start with sex?!” His exasperation leaked through.

“Well, excuse me for never going through Time Lord puberty!” she yelled back as she jumped to her feet. “You know, that time of life when somebody explains just what the hell is going on with your body suddenly?” She threw the notebook on the ground. “It’s not like I have anybody else to ask!” She fought to keep the tears away, wrapping her arms around her torso for comfort. “It feels sometimes like I can’t even breathe properly. I can’t tell if my heart is beating too fast, because there’s two of them, and they don’t even feel right. I can feel my own pancreas, for god’s sake! And I’ve got four kidneys—I can **count** my bleedin’ kidneys, inside my own body, and I’ve got FOUR of them! I smell things. I hear things. There’s colors I’ve never even seen before. And those hot white bars across everything. There’s this weird song that plays in my head all the time and something buzzing or purring, too, and I can’t even try to relax myself in the bath like I always have because even that’s not normal.” She was losing the fight against the tears. “And every time I try to act just the way I used to around you, something weird happens, and it hurts you. And I scare you.”

“Rose, no,” the Doctor said with a sigh, “you don’t scare me.”

“I want to make you proud of me but all I seem to do is frighten you away.” Rose could barely finish the sentence, her throat closing up and turning her voice to a squeak as she dropped back into the seat.

“Oh, Rose,” the Doctor said softly. She felt him sit next to her on the captain’s chair and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling him to her chest. She couldn’t stop crying. She hated that she couldn’t stop crying.”Shhhhh, Rose, shhhh.” He rocked her back and forth slowly until her tears let up, then he pulled away. “Rose, look at me.” She tried to meet his eyes, but couldn’t. He reached over and scooped her notebook up off the floor. “Here, write this down,” he said, pressing the pencil into her fingers. He waited until she had the pencil under control and the notebook open to a clean page. “Sometimes, you won’t feel your chest rise when you’re breathing because your bypass respiratory system’s engaged. It’s absolutely normal for any Gallifreyan. Eventually, it’ll feel natural. Same with your hearts. After I passed through the Chameleon arch and reverted to my Time Lord state, it took me a while to feel comfortable with two hearts again. The strangeness will pass. You’ll have to give yourself time. You have plenty of it now.”

Rose sniffled, nodded, rubbed the back of her hand across her nose and kept writing. Without comment, the Doctor handed her a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Your senses, your hearing and touch and smell, like your vision, have more breadth than you’ve ever had before. You’re taking in information your human senses couldn’t detect, and trying to interpret it in ways your human consciousness can understand. Those ‘hot white bars’ you’re seeing is probably your time sense, all the possible time lines stretching out from the current moment. We will have to work on that together, because you need to understand how to navigate them—and not damage Time itself.”

“No Reapers, yeah?” She shuddered.

“No Reapers,” he agreed. “Now, that song?” She could hear the smile in his voice. “That’s the TARDIS. She’ll always be in the back of your mind now, keeping track of you, and helping you keep track of her.” He sounded so pleased about that. Now that Rose thought of it, that song was pretty similar to the faint memories she had of opening the TARDIS’ heart to get back to the GameStation. Just stronger. Where the TARDIS used to be this faint pressure in her head, never unpleasant, just always there… now it was like walking through that cave system on Bespin IV. Even in the dark, you could tell there was so much more space around you and ahead of you. If she could keep from being distracted by the other noise in her head.

“And that buzzing, purring thing?”

“Ah,” he cleared his throat. “That’s probably me.” Rose risked a glance up at him. The Doctor was looking away, a little embarrassed, running his hand up the back of his head. “You’re probably aware of those times when I don’t have my shields up.” The buzz-purr faded to near silence. “I got out of the habit of doing that onboard the TARDIS, after the War. It was good to hear others in my head, even just the faint sense I get from humans.”

Rose looked at him. “Better than the silence?”

He met her gaze, and his eyes shifted away. “Anything was better than that.”

Rose nodded. She understood what it was like to feel alone, though she was sure she didn’t really know how he’d felt being alone inside his head for the first time in his life. She’d always been alone inside her head before now.

“And, as for your other biology,” he flushed slightly, “I hope in time it feels as natural as your double heartbeat.”

“Why does it scare you? What’s wrong with… it?” She waved vaguely in the direction of her new bits.

“You’re really asking if there’s anything wrong with you, aren’t you?” he narrowed his eyes. She glanced away and nodded briefly, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. The Doctor frowned and blew a puff of air through his lips. “Rose, look at me.” When she wouldn’t look up, he grabbed her chin and pulled it up. “Rose, the only reason—the only one—that I could use to stay away from you, before, was that you were not Gallifreyan. You were human and humans are fragile. So very, very fragile. I would have injured you. It helped—more than I should admit—that I couldn’t smell your pheromones. It was difficult enough without them.” He shifted uncomfortably in the jumpseat, letting go of her face.

“But now you can?”

“But now I can. And I’m out of practice for controlling those impulses.” He stared at her lips, then swallowed. “You called me ‘Spock’ once. In some ways, you were right. Time Lords were a very intellectually advanced species who never came to terms with their primitive reproductive side. Oh, you don’t scare me, Rose.” He reached out a long index finger and lightly traced her cheekbone. “I scare myself. You’re not fragile and human anymore. But there’s so much about Gallifreyan physiology you don’t know, and I do, and I’m terrified that I’m going to take advantage of you when you don’t know all your choices.”

“But you’re the only one I’ve wanted,” she replied, puzzled.

“I’m the only one you’ve met. And I won’t do that to you,” he said. “You deserve better than me.” The Doctor stood and walked out the TARDIS doors, heading out into the installation she’d woken up in, ending their conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to fannishliss and Rabid1st, whose idea that male Gallifreyans had internal sexual organs I have gleefully stolen (as sublimely alien) and will run with as far as I can take it.


	17. Ask Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor rediscovers one of the things he hated about Gallifrey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
> hekal (heh-KAHL)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
> kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
> shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
> tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
> temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

“Welcome, Doctor,” the Keeper said.

The Doctor spun around, raising his eyebrows at the approach of Romana’s chosen representative. There was something terribly familiar about him, but he had no telepathic presence, so perhaps a Karnian servant she’d had during the War? Though they were not Gallifreyan, the residents of Karn—where the Pythian priestesses had fled after Rassilon’s revolution—remembered themselves throughout temporal rearrangements that were standard during the Time War, holding all those versions of themselves in multiple timelines, overwritten and re-played. There had been a sharp increase in mental fragmentation as the War went on, as untrained time sensitive minds splintered under the strain. This one had immense self-discipline, to be able to wait so long for him without going mad from isolation. Although, he supposed K9 did provide some company.

“Keeper,” he replied.

“Have you decided on the disposition of the other Archetypes?” the Keeper asked him. “I would send my charges out into the universe and lay down my burden.”

The Doctor felt a flash of guilt. The old Karnian just wanted to die and be done and here he was, lollygagging and prevaricating… Oh!

“How many Protector Archetypes do you have?” the Doctor asked.

“Do you have a match for this Archetype, Doctor?”

“Yes. Earth, late 20th century, Britain,” he replied, his voice tightening a bit. “Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.”

The Keeper touched a few controls, shifting the pods in a dizzying array of movement, and the **_hekal_** -colored pod glided to a stop in front of him. The neon puce of the Archetype’s traditional robes colored the pod, too, as the screen above it flickered into life. “This one, Doctor?”

There he was. Good old Alastair. The Doctor gazed on that familiar face, memories from his second life and forward burbling through his head, and… hesitated. “Can we ask them?” he turned to the Keeper. “Can we ask them before we pull them out of their lives?”

“It is at their deaths, Doctor, that we remove them from their timestreams,” the Keeper replied.

“Yes, like you did with Rose”—the Doctor glared at him—“and don’t think we’re not going to have a talk about that.”

“She was about to die in the Void,” the Keeper replied. “A death which never completes.”

The Doctor nodded and swallowed.

“Would you prefer that I put her back, Doctor?” the Keeper asked.

“NO!”

“Very well, Doctor.”

The Doctor frowned. This was one of the ways he hated Gallifrey. Nothing made you react more like a child than getting treated like a child and the Keeper’s oh-so-reasonableness was just one example of the kind of manipulation Time Lords were famous for. His eyes narrowed.

“I want to ask them.”

“Ask them?” the Keeper’s voice rose incredulously. “Ask them?”

“Ask them if they mind living for another thousand years or so,” the Doctor replied, “before I drag them into something they haven’t chosen. Because one thing I’ve learned about humans is how they don’t like being dragged along. Can you imagine what would happen if a group of them were unhappy? They’d turn this place into a discotheque or start ceramics classes. Perhaps take up knitting. Begin a chess club. Or chainsaw woodcarving. Humans. You never know what they’ll do if you don’t ask them first.”

The Keeper looked a little dazed. “Ask them,” he muttered. “He wants to ask them.”

The Doctor grinned to himself. A representative of Gallifrey flustered and off-balance. Yes, this was much more like it.


	18. Information Gathering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Rose and Jack get a little sidetracked by the information in her head.

“Hey, Rosie.”

“Jack!” She jumped up and ran to him. He caught her as she leaped into his arms.

“Hey, you really are a Time Lord, aren’t you?”

Her grin faded. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve got that look on your face that the Doctor gets, whenever I get too close.”

“Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry. I wish”—

—“that you hadn’t brought me back to life?” Jack held each of Rose’s shoulders and looked down on her. “Don’t be. I’m thankful you loved me enough to want me around. Unless you were seeing this and thought, hey, I want to do Jack someday—better keep that boy around. I’m okay with that, too.”

Rose ran her hands down his chest and backed away, blushing and shaking her head. “Jaaack,” she warned, laughing.

“Don’t know why the Doctor gets all the hot women, he never does anything with them. He **always** got the hot women, too. You missed seeing the message from that gorgeous friend of the Doc’s—the President,” Jack grinned. “She was something. Almost as sexy as you.”

“The Lady President?” Rose asked, eyes going wide. “Romanavoratrelundar of Heartshaven?”

 _So Rose **did** have information in her head, after all. Good._ Jack might just get some questions answered without incident. He shrugged to Rose, “She was Ro-something.” He nudged Rose’s shoulder as the thought occurred to him. “She did mention getting thrown into jail cells with the Doc. Looks like rude isn’t just something for the last two versions of him, right?”

Rose giggled.

“Too bad she wasn’t still in charge when the Master brought the Time Lords back,” Jack mused. “Rassilon was alright but she was someone I would always introduce myself to.”

“You wouldn’t get very far,” Rose said. “This immortality of yours is really weird. Being around you is kind of like being a little motion sick all the time. It’s just being a little nauseous whenever you’re in range. I can’t imagine anyone who can feel you that way being able to kiss you, let alone have sex.”

“Damn, Rosie,” Jack said, “way to bruise a guy’s ego.”

Her eyes got wide and she clamped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my god, that was rude,” she said through her fingers. “I’ve turned into the Doctor, haven’t I? I’m rude!”

Jack laughed. “Nah, it’s alright. Probably shouldn’t sleep with Politician Archetype anyway, right?” he said. “Sex and politicians never works out, no matter what world you’re on.”

Rose frowned. “Politician wasn’t her Archetype—that’s what was such a surprise about her candidacy. Her Archetype was Archivist.” She looked up at Jack and smirked. “Although some of her opponents were starting to agitate to put her in the Renegade Archetype, like the Doctor. But they ran out of time.”

“Time War?”

Rose’s brow furrowed. “I… guess?” She hugged herself, face serious. “Listen to me, talking about this woman I’ve never met, and never even read a magazine about, and all this is in my head about her. Which is so **weird** , Jack! I’m not even sure you can understand.”

“What, having information and skills in your head you don’t remember learning?”

“Yeah.”

“Actually, I do.”

“But you had your memories taken away!”

“I did. But they left all the motor skills and technical information. I know the layout of the weapons factories at Villengard—but I have no idea how I learned it.” Rose touched his forearm, her mouth twisted in sympathy, before dropping it back to her side. “I can also disassemble and reassemble a nerve disruptor—that’s a 29th century weapon—that I have no memory of ever touching, let alone learning.” He glanced over at Rose. “So, yes, I do understand, actually.”

Rose nodded, her wide and generous mouth unnaturally somber, and sighed. “It’s really weird, Jack. It’s like I understand why the Doctor babbles so much, now. I’ve got all this… stuff… in my head and it all wants out at the same time. I know it, but I don’t really understand it. It’s like, I used to know gravity worked, you know? But now I know all the maths behind gravity, and I could tell you all the formulas, but I don’t think I really understand it. It’s like I’ve got the internet in my head.”

Jack had a wicked thought. “So, what did they put in your head about the Doctor?”

“Prydonian Renegade from the House of Lungbarrow.” Rose’s eyes grew wide. “Oh my god, Jack!” She clamped her hands over her mouth again and started giggling.

“He’s a what from a what?”

Rose’s eyes grew wider. “Jack, I can see what his other bodies looked like!” She giggled.

Jack leaned forward. “I saw the white-haired one who worked for UNIT, the one with the scarf and the one with the cricket clothes, while I was waiting for the one I knew.”

“That’s Three, Four and Five.” She dropped her hands and her eyes refocused, like she was looking off into the distance. “Oh…” She sighed, ending in a soft murmur.

“What, Rosie?”

“His Eighth body was really a bit of all right.”

 **Damn.** Jack wished he could see what she was seeing. “Damn, Rosie, you know how to torture a guy.”

“Oh! It should all be in the TARDIS databanks,” she said, jumping up and moving to the console. She slapped buttons, flicked switches and turned knobs. “Memory banks… the Type 40s keep them in an odd place… and holographic interface—that’s the same one he used to send me back from the Game Station, the wanker—and the Doctor… and… here! Look at him!”

Jack saw an old man wearing Edwardian clothes, silver hair combed back, gripping his own lapels as he rocked back and forth on his feet, just like the Doctor sometimes did now. Rose grinned at Jack. “That’s the first one—back before he’d ever regenerated!” She twisted a knob and the image scrambled and reformed into a shorter man with huge blue eyes and a bassethound face, wearing a stovepipe hat and playing a recorder. There was no sound.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “I had to wear one of those hats while they were in fashion,” he told Rose. “They’re a pain in the ass.”

She laughed and turned the knob again, forcing the image to scramble and reform into one of the faces Jack recognized. “And here’s his third incarnation,” she said.

“UNIT!” Jack shouted. “That’s the Doctor who worked with UNIT in the seventies and eighties!” He grinned over at Rose, who grinned back. “I ran around most of the UK trying to avoid this version of him and the earlier version of the Master. Those guys got around.”

Rose twisted her wrist again and a new image reformed. “This incarnation was elected as Lord President of Gallifrey, although he never took office.”

“The one with the scarf.”

“And the next.”

“Cricket boy. Probably the best looking of the ones I knew about.”

Rose laughed. “Just you wait,” she said. She flicked through two images: garishly costumed “Six” and sly-faced “Seven” and twisted the switch again.

“Whoa.”

“I know. I told you he was a bit of all right.” Rose gazed at the Doctor’s eighth incarnation speculatively. “The Time Lords are weird about beauty. They don’t think they’re vulnerable to it, they think they’re above being affected by it, but deep down, they’re as sensitive to it as us apes.”

“ **Us** apes?”

Rose’s mouth twisted. “I keep forgetting I’m not human anymore. I don’t know that I’ll ever remember that I’m not human anymore.” She turned back to where the hologram of the Doctor’s eighth incarnation was silently exclaiming and gesturing, manic grin on his face. “He refused to be part of the War, and he disappeared. No one could track him. And suddenly, he came back to Gallifrey as this”—the knob clicked again and a young man’s face appeared, topped with fair curls and a wearing a grim expression—“and he told us he was the Warrior: ‘Doctor no more,’ he said.”

“And he ended the War.”

“Yeah.” Rose’s teeth worried at her lower lip. “The one after this is the one we both knew first.”

“Our first Doctor.”

“Yeah.”

“Poor bastard.”

Rose’s chin trembled. “Yeah.” Jack reached out to enfold Rose in a hug and she inhaled sharply and let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The nerve disruptor is a weapon created by author Lois McMaster Bujold in the Vorkosigan Saga. I heartily recommend these books to anyone.


	19. Inquisitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and the Keeper hash out some details. The Keeper doesn't necessarily like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to life circumstances, I will only be able to post once a week--likely Sundays--for a while. My apologies to my readers.

“We don’t **ask** , Doctor,” the Keeper said, with that typical snobbery in his tone. _Why was this Karnian so familiar?_

The Doctor’s gaze shifted to the Keeper and his gaze sharpened. “Well, **I** do.”

“Not that I’ve observed, Doctor,” the Keeper replied, coolly, balance regained. “You’ve been more inclined to decide for your companions than let them make their own choices.”

The Doctor hid the wince that comment engendered. “And I’ve learned something from it, Keeper,” he felt himself reply. “If I hadn’t sent Rose away, she wouldn’t have felt the pull of the Void to the extent that made her slip. If I had never made her choice for her, I wouldn’t have lost her. It’s called learning from my mistakes, Keeper—occasionally, I do it.” The truth behind that surprised even himself. At least when it came to Rose, anyway, he’d learned: _Don’t send her away._ Sending her away caused more pain than letting her make her own decision.

“If you must, Doctor,” the Keeper muttered. The sense of familiarity kept tickling the back of the Doctor’s memory.

“I must. If they are going to be Time Lords, they need to be so out of choice,” the Doctor replied. “Not coercion. What kind of friend would I be to force them into living forever?”

“Living forever?” the Keeper interrupted. “Even Time Lords must die, Doctor.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Someday, even I. And it will be welcome.” He thought back on all the battles and losses, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets. “Sometimes, you can live too long.” He rocked back on his heels and pivoted to face the Keeper. “And I’m not going to do that to these people. They’re my friends, first. They get to choose. So I will ask— **we** will ask.”

“Very well then, Doctor,” the Keeper agreed. _Too easily,_ the Doctor thought. That oh-so-reasonable tone was back. It was always a trap. “ **How** shall we ask them?”

 _Hah. A solid attempt._ “We’ll use one of your extra Time Rings, of course,” the Doctor smiled at him, tapping his sonic screwdriver against his thigh. The Keeper’s sour expression made the Doctor grin even wider. “I noticed the stack of them you had stored in the antechamber. I can set them”—he waggled his sonic at the Keeper—“and I’ll be ready to drop in on the Brigadier and just about anyone else.”

The Keeper sighed, his shoulders sagging.

“Very well, Doctor. You shall ask them.”

The Doctor grinned widely, twirling the sonic between his fingers.

“With whom would you like to begin? This Protector?” the Keeper gestured to the Brigadier.

“No,” the Doctor replied slowly, drawling out the single word. “What do you have for Inquisitors?”

The Keeper’s head swiveled to stare at the Doctor. “Inquisitor Archetypes?” The Karnian stroked the edge of the control panel, a gesture which teased at the edges of the Doctor’s memories. “I have only the one.” He shuffled the pods around, until the white-clad Inquisitor pod shifted down to the floor. He touched a control, and an image of a lizard-skinned humanoid appeared on the screen.

“C’rizz?” the Doctor demanded, turning to glare at the Keeper. “You tapped C’rizz for Inquisitor? That would destroy him!”

The Keeper stepped back from the look on the Doctor’s face. “My apologies, Doctor, I did not know your companions as you do.”

The Doctor wiped a hand down his face, getting his temper under control. “I have a different recommendation for Inquisitor,” he replied abruptly. “Earth, late 20th Century, Britain. Fourth incarnation. Sarah Jane Smith.”

“Ah,” the Keeper breathed out. “She was marked for crèche care.”

The Doctor pivoted on his heels and stared at Romana’s representative. “You’d put Sarah Jane on Time Tot duty?” He started to laugh. He saw the Keeper’s face and laughed louder.

The Keeper was— _dare he think it?_ —not amused.

He couldn’t wait to tell Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor Archetype was first shown on screen during the Sixth Doctor series "Trial of a Time Lord."  
> C’rizz was a reptilian, chameleonic companion of the Eighth Doctor in the Big Finish audio series. He was mentioned by name during _Night of the Doctor_.


	20. The Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack looked over at Rose. Now was the time, really. “So, that Keeper guy. Is it just me, or is he creepy as f__k?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that Jack uses strong language, including obscenities, and will throughout this story.

“So, that Keeper guy out there…” Jack began.

“You mean”—Rose’s assured voice abruptly cut off with an airless squeak.

Jack stepped back to see her face. “You mean what?”

Rose’s mouth was hanging open, like she’d been frozen mid-word. “…I dunno?”

“You don’t know?”

Rose was staring off in the distance like she was looking for answers there. “I thought I knew his name, his real name, but I don’t. But I expected to.” She met his gaze. “That’s weird. It’s like, you know, when there’s a word on the tip of your tongue and you know that you know it but you can’t remember it for your life.”

Jack nodded. “It’s like someone took a chunk out of your memories. All the neurons connect to where the information is supposed to be, but nothing’s there.”

Rose swallowed. “Yeah.” She reached out to touch his arm. “Oh, Jack. I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, Rosie, why are you apologizing? You had nothing to do with the Time Agency.”

“I know,” she replied, gently stroking his arm. “I just know how awful it feels and I’m sorry.”

Jack looked Rose over. Now was the time, really. “So, that Keeper guy. Is it just me, or is he creepy as fuck?”

“He did terrible things in his previous lives,” Rose replied absently. Her mouth dropped open. “He’s a”—

Jack clamped his hand over her mouth. “Shhhhh.”

She gripped his forearms and shook him.

“Listen to me, Rosie,” Jack said. “He’s not the Master. But he is what you think he is. And he doesn’t want the Doc to know. Because he pissed the Doc off once, and the Doc hates him. If he finds out, this whole thing their Lady President set up will never happen.”

Rose pried Jack’s hand off her mouth.

“How long have you known what the Keeper is?”

“From the second he looked at me.”

“If he’s such a bad choice, why did the Lady President”—her voice cut off. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Jack waited. “Rosie?”

Her eyes were wide and unblinking, staring off into a memory only she could see. “It’s his penance,” she said, looking up at Jack. “His redemption. He asked to do it.”

“Is he right?”

“Right?” Rose asked.

“Would the Doctor not go along with this plan to bring back the Time Lords if he knew who the Keeper had been once?”

Rose frowned, thoughts flashing across her face too quickly for Jack to understand them. She slowly began to nod. “I think he would,” she said. “I think he’d fight it.”

Jack sighed. “Do you agree to wait to tell him?”

Rose opened her mouth to answer when the Doctor loped in through the TARDIS doors. “Hands off the blonde, Harkness,” he growled, in a mix of mockery and earnestness.

Jack tried to catch Rose’s eye. “Rosie?”

Rose was staring at the Doctor with an open mouth and a slight frown. Her hand lifted, as if pulled upward, and she traced a twisting pattern across the air. She gave Jack a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, Jack,” she said, her voice resigned. “I think you’re right.”

“Right? Right about what?” the Doctor asked, suspiciously.

“Right that you’d come back even more irritated than when you left,” Rose said.

Jack smiled.


	21. Romana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your hot lady friend the President—where’d she go? Why was Crazier Than Hell Rassilon in charge instead of your sexy friend?”

“So, Doc…”

“Jack, I’ve asked you to stop calling me that,” the Doctor barked at him.

Rose saw Jack blink a few times. “Okay, **Doctor** ,” Jack replied. “I had a question for you.”

“What?” the Doctor peered at him suspiciously.

“Your hot lady friend the President”—

—“You mean Romana?” —

—“Yeah,” Jack continued, “where’d she go? Why was Crazier Than Hell Rassilon in charge instead of your sexy friend?”

The Doctor glared at him.

“Actually, Doctor,” Rose added tentatively, “I’d like to know, too? In my head, she’s still Lady President of Gallifrey. What happened?”

The console room was so quiet Rose could hear the circuits trip as the TARDIS ran a self-diagnostic. Rose noted that 3 minutes, 24 seconds passed before the Doctor spoke.

“Grayvas, Kelner and Jelpax.”

“Cardinal Grayvas, Councillor Kelner and Archivist Jelpax?” Rose asked, memories that weren't her own stirring in her head.

“Yes.”

“What did they do?”

“The War had already started and was going badly. So they went into the Death Zone, into Rassilon’s Tower, and begged him to return to the Presidency. Jelpax offered his remaining regenerations to Rassilon, so he could leave the Tower.” The Doctor’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “Grayvas and Kelner led a vote of no confidence against Romana and Rassilon was elected President in an almost unanimous vote. Romana was sent to Arcadia.”

“That’s where she was when she talked to you,” Jack muttered.

The Doctor closed his eyes briefly, took a breath and reopened them. “Arcadia fell. No survivors. I went back to Gallifrey. I took the Moment. I ended the War.”

Rose’s vision blurred. She stepped forward and stood on the Doctor’s right side, then reached her left arm forward and twined her fingers with his own. He gripped her hand fiercely, although his face remained smooth (except for that small line between his brows) and his body appeared relaxed. She whispered, “I’m so sorry you lost your friend.”

The Doctor glanced down at her and his eyes made her gasp. She hadn’t seen an expression like it on him since her Doctor with blue eyes. Bleak and enraged and self-loathing. She tightened her clasp around the Doctor’s hand and tipped her face up to meet his gaze. “There’s still me,” she added.

The Doctor’s frozen wasteland of an expression thawed as they gazed into each other’s eyes. His lips parted for a brief “Yes” to steal out, before sealing shut again. Rose’s other hand stole out to clasp around their entwined fingers.

“Politics.” Jack’s voice startled her. Not just him speaking at all, but his tone was bitter and cold. The Doctor twitched a little, but didn’t jump like she did.

“And fear,” the Time Lord added.

“As always,” Jack replied, his jaw working.

There was something Rose was missing here, some undercurrent she was ignorant about, something that was breaking Jack’s heart. She glanced over at the Doctor, who was mastering his unease around Jack to grip the immortal man’s shoulder. Jack shrugged it off and strode toward the outer doors of the TARDIS.

“Don't wait up, kids.”

And Jack was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grayvas first appeared in the Tenth Doctor episode “The End of Time,” as a member of the High Council (the one with the beard). He was later fleshed out in the War Doctor book _Engines of War_. Kelner first appeared in the Fourth Doctor episode “The Invasion of Time.” Jelpax was first introduced in the Fifth Doctor book _Divided Loyalties._


	22. Parallel Me, Parallel You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She forgets he's not actually "her" Doctor. Or she's not actually "his" Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Rose would have died at Canary Wharf. For her, no Dimension Cannon. No metacrisis. But it's after Journey's End for this Doctor...

“What”—Rose cleared her throat—“What was that all about?”

“It’s a long story,” the Doctor sighed. “And it’s Jack’s to tell.”

“Whatever it is, it’s breaking his heart!”

The Doctor closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “I know.”

“You know?”

“He has the curse of the Time Lords, without being a Time Lord.”

“I don’t understand why you call it a curse,” she said.

“Oh, Rose,” the Doctor sighed. “You’re going to outlive your entire family.”

“What, my mum?”

“And Tony and Pete.”

“Who?”

He blinked. “Right,” he muttered, “you didn’t have a Pete in your timeline.” He frowned down at the TARDIS console while Rose just stared, flabbergasted. “Your mum’s gone in this timeline,” he said, looking up. “In this timeline, she’s over in Pete’s World, across the Void, with another version of you and another version of me.”

“A parallel me?”

“Yes.”

“And my mum’s still alive, there?”

“Your mum—wait, what?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Different timeline.”

“Oh, right.” And what was funny—not funny like a joke, but funny like **weird** —was that she actually understood the difference and the weirdest part was how she didn’t find this conversation to be that weird. “My mum died months before Canary Wharf. Cancer. She wouldn’t let me take her on the TARDIS to the future to cure her. She said it wasn’t fair to everyone else.”

The Doctor’s face drained of color. “Oh, Rose.”

Rose shrugged, trying to suppress the tears. “The only reason we were even there was because Mickey’s grandmum had fallen down the stairs and I was bringing her some audio books from Aldur VII. You said it was alright”—she looked at him—“well, the other you said it was alright. We were just going to tell Rita-Ann that they were all science fiction.”

“What a difference in our timelines.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So my mum’s alive in this timeline?” Rose tried to keep her voice from wavering.

“She’s trapped a universe away.”

“But she’s alive, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And she has me?”

“Yeah. Parallel you. And parallel Pete. And a little boy named Tony.”

“A brother?” Rose’s eyes welled up.

“Yeah.”

“And”—here Rose’s voice shook—“parallel me has a parallel you?”

“Human you has a human me.” He shrugged. “Well, a biological metacrisis who is mostly human, though not entirely human.”

“But enough for getting on with?”

“Parallel me has just one heart,” the Doctor said softly.

“And a human lifespan?”

“Yeah.”

She thought through the twisting timelines that had intersected here, with the Keeper’s interference. “So your Rose, a human, got a parallel you that’s mostly human,” she said, slowly working it out. “And Time Lord you got a parallel Rose, a human in a Time Lord body.”

“Yes. It’s a bit wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,” he replied.

“Do you think I planned this?”

“What?”

“When I was Bad Wolf. Did I do this to us? All four of us?”

“No!” He reached out to grip her hands. “No, Rose, you saved four of us from lives of misery. Mismatched, like… like….”

“Like the tea mugs in the TARDIS kitchen?”

“Oi! I like the mugs!”

“You only like the one that says ‘Trust me, I’m a Doctor.’”

He laughed. It was so good to see him laugh, how his eyes crinkled up at the corners and his whole face lit up. She wanted to cling to that laugh as long as possible, but it didn’t last long.

“Oh, Rose,” he said, hugging her closely. “I am still so glad I met you.”

She leaned backward, out of the hug slightly. “Yeah?”

His mouth quirked up on one corner. “Yeah.”

"You don't think I did this when I was Bad Wolf?"

"Would it be a bad thing if you had?" he said, looking down at her and raising his brows.

"Maybe not?" she replied.

"Maybe not." He smiled and it made her smile. But she couldn't smile long. A nagging concern kept cropping up.

“But what about Jack?” Rose asked. “He shouldn’t be alone when he feels like this.”

The Doctor nodded and let go, twining their fingers together. “Let’s go see.”

 


	23. You Owe Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack has a candidate for the Archivist Archetype: “21st century, Earth, Wales, Cardiff. Ianto Daffyd Jones.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the Sunday post. I will be away from my computer and unable to post on Sunday. So you get it early!

Jack walked straight to the Keeper and stood across from him over a cryo-pod. “You owe me.”

The Keeper looked up from his circle-covered keyboard to glare at Jack under feathery white eyebrows. “I have just finished dealing with the Doctor, Fixed Point. I have no patience with you.”

“Rose knows you’re a Time Lord.” The Keeper’s eyes widened and his mouth opened as if to speak when Jack talked right over him. “I convinced her not to tell the Doc.” He leaned forward to stare deep into the Keeper’s face, his voice harsh and intent, grated out over his teeth. “You. Owe. Me.”

The Keeper blinked first. “I cannot repair you, Fixed Point. You have a death waiting for you, and it is the only death which Time accepts for you. All other deaths will be rejected.”

Jack shook his head and made a slashing gesture with his hand. “I want you to add someone to this selection of people for Time Lord bodies. You have extras, right? In case some of these people don’t work out?”

“The Doctor wishes to ask them,” the Keeper said sourly. “So they have an opportunity to refuse to be Time Lords. He is foolish that way.”

“But you’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Jack felt hope rise in his chest. “You’re going to ask them.”

“Yes.” The word was bitten out.

“Good old Doctor,” Jack replied and looked up and around the cryo-facility. “What Archetype is a quiet, efficient administrator and record-keeper?”

“Archivist.”

“Romana’s Archetype?”

The Keeper stared in shock, shoulders stiff and hands still. “How dare you speak of the Lady President so informally!”

“Rose told me all about her. And how she got overthrown by crazy-ass Rassilon. I have a candidate for her Archetype. Would she object?”

“Likely not.” The Keeper’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“21st century, Earth, Wales, Cardiff. Ianto Daffyd Jones.”

The Keeper pressed some keys and Ianto’s face popped up on the monitor of a pale blue pod. Jack swallowed, staring at the face he still saw in nightmares, gasping, dying. “Your paramour.” His voice was toneless.

“You owe me,” Jack snarled. “You owe me big.”

“The Doctor decides. I do not. I cannot,” the Keeper said. “The timelines only blossom if he makes the decisions.”

Jack nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Just put Ianto up there.” He turned away, then spun back. “And you tell me when the Doctor’s making decisions for this Archetype. I get a chance to speak for Ianto.” His hands clenched in the pockets of his greatcoat. “You try to cut me out and I will spill the beans.”

The Keeper’s eyebrows rose.

“The Doc will know in 30 seconds exactly what you are.”

“And just what is he, Jack?” the Doctor’s voice came from the doorway, surprising them both.

Jack and the Keeper replied at the same time.

“An asshole.

“A servant.”


	24. Kathertikon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She already regretted agreeing with Jack to withhold the Keeper’s identity. She opened her mouth to tell the Doctor just who the Keeper was—and saw the white hot bars that twined across the Doctor twist and go black. She bit back her words and the lines resumed glowing white-gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
>  katherikon (keh-THAIR-ih-ken) the "voiced" TH of There/That/They  
>  latara (lah-TAR-ah)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
>  hekal (heh-KAHL)  
>  kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
>  shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
>  tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
>  temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

“Jack!” Rose exclaimed, glancing over to the Doctor.

He squeezed her hand, lifting an eyebrow at the same time. “It’s not as if I haven’t heard the word before.” He stared at Jack. “So what’s the problem?”

The Keeper looked over at the Doctor and answered. “He told me to add his paramour to the Lady President’s Archetype,” he said, his expression stiff and his voice snobby.

She already regretted agreeing with Jack to withhold the Keeper’s identity. She opened her mouth to tell the Doctor just who he was—and saw the white hot bars that twined across the Doctor twist and go black. She bit back her words and the lines resumed glowing white-gold. She tugged at his sleeve. Nothing. “Doctor?”

The Doctor cranked his head over to look at her. “Hmm?”

She raised a hand and traced the lines in front of her. “What does it mean when all the white hot bars go black?”

He pivoted to her, tension in his shoulders. “What?”

“I can see all those white hot bars across you and they just went black and came back to white.” She looked up at him. “What does that mean?”

The Doctor paled, his freckles standing out even more. “It means I’m a **_kathertikon_**.” He swallowed. “Time Lords aren’t supposed to be.”

Jack frowned. “A what?”

Rose felt the professor in her head stir. “A **_kathertikon_**. I suppose it’s like a—a path-chooser? A choice-maker?” She gripped the Doctor’s hand tighter. “He’s the center of multiple timelines.”

"A space-time nexus?" Jack shrugged. “So what? When **isn't** he?”

Rose shook her head. “It’s different,” she said. “He’s always been making choices alongside timelines and inside timelines, but”—

—“but?” Jack interjected.

“I’m not supposed to **be** the timeline,” the Doctor concluded. He turned to Rose and unlaced their fingers. “You have to go back to the TARDIS.”

“What?” she said. “No!”

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. “Rose, you can’t be here while I—I choose. Your observation of my choices can skew them.”

Jack snorted. “What, like quantum physics?”

The Doctor’s eyes shifted over to the immortal man. “Yes,” he said. “Temporal physics are sub-quantum by a factor of 39.”

“But Doctor”—

“Rose. Please.”

“But”—

“Please.”

“I want to help,” she whispered.

“I know,” he murmured back. “This is the only way you can.” He quirked a half-smile at her. “If you were still human, you could have stayed.”

She frowned.

“Rose,” he said, reaching out to grip her upper arms. “You don’t have the training to block your perception of Time around another Time Lord. With you here, it’s—well, you” —

She could see him struggling for words, for an explanation, something that would help. She knew what he was trying to say.

“I muddy the waters.”

He closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them and sighed deeply. “Yes.”

“But you can’t see what will happen from your choices!”

He nodded. “I have to make them blind. Just like everyone else in the universe.” Both his brows were raised almost up into his hairline as he dipped his head to look her in the eye. “It’s a bit lowering for a Time Lord, but I can’t see my own timelines. I mustn’t. And no one can tell me what they see. I have to do this alone.”

The professor in Rose’s head was firmly stating his agreement with the Doctor’s words. Her heart—hearts!—disagreed and she shook her head. “You’re rubbish on your own.”

The brows lowered and a little smile played on his lips. “I am, Rose Tyler,” he agreed. “But I’ll have Jack to keep me out of trouble.”

She felt her jaw tremble, then inhaled and shoved the emotions down. She nodded, not trusting her throat to form words that weren’t pinched or pleading, and rose on her toes to kiss his cheek.

Without looking back, Rose fled the room.

She made sure she didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have to shift weekly updates to Thursdays instead--looks like my Sundays are going to be very full.


	25. Sentenced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What Archetype is this one?” the Doctor said, staring down into a neglected cryo-pod just behind the Archivist pod. But this pod had no color coding, no projection screen above it, everything just a featureless grey.

As Rose retreated further and further down the hall, the Doctor’s gaze got sharper and sharper. He glared at the Keeper, then at Jack, and back again. “Now, what’s going on, Jack?”

Jack grit his teeth . “I want Ianto as a candidate for Archivist.”

The Doctor swiveled from facing Jack to facing the Keeper.

“Yes,” the creaky old Time Lord replied to the Doctor’s attention. “He ordered me to add his paramour to the Lady President’s Archetype. The Lady President’s Archetype, of all choices!”

The Doctor’s mouth twitched. “I should hardly think Romana would be offended, Keeper,” he said. “She was a bit of a loose cannon herself, you know.”

The look on the Keeper’s face made Jack snicker. The old Time Lord twisted a knob and the pods shuffled again. A pod colored the saturated green of the Archivist Archetype glided to a halt right in front of them and the Keeper struck a few keys on its controls. The monitor above the pod flickered between Ianto’s face and that of a dark-haired woman with a determined glint in her eye.

“Barbara!” the Doctor exclaimed. “That’s an excellent choice, Keeper,” he added. “Gold star for you.” He turned to Jack. “Are you sure, Jack?” he asked. “Do you want to sentence Ianto to a life as long as yours?”

Jack felt his jaw clench. “Would you sentence Rose?”

The Doctor’s eyes dropped. He cleared his throat and said to the Keeper, “Barbara Wright, yes. Either she or Ianto would be fine. We’ll ask them both.” He was turning away when he suddenly stopped and pivoted back.

“What Archetype is this one?” the Doctor said, staring down into a neglected cryo-pod just behind the Archivist pod. But this pod had no color coding, no projection screen above it, everything just a featureless grey.

Jack noticed the Keeper watching the Doctor carefully as he delivered his answer. “Renegade,” the old voice creaked out.

The Doctor spun around, staring open-mouthed at the Keeper. “Renegade? Who are you resurrecting?” he demanded. “The Master? The Rani? The Monk?” Somehow, Jack knew what the Keeper’s answer was going to be before it even left the old Time Lord’s mouth.

“It is being held for the Renegade known as the Doctor, should he choose to match his lifespan to his **_tehlsohka’s_** lifespan,” the Keeper replied, softly, like a man trying to lure a horse to rein. And seeing the Doctor’s wide, startled eyes, Jack supposed the Keeper wasn’t entirely wrong.

“What?” the Doctor exclaimed. “What!?!”

“Have you not claimed your **_tehlsohka_** yet, Doctor?” the Keeper asked, mildly. The Doctor’s blushing, stammering disclaimer piqued Jack’s interest. **_Tehlsohka_**? What the fuck was **_tehlsohka_**? Something that made the Doctor blush like a virgin schoolboy was something Jack really wanted to understand. Another question for Rose, once he got her alone again. Along with a discussion about seeing timelines.

The Keeper was treating the idea of the Doctor and Rose being together as a _fait accompli_. Jack wondered if that would be more effective than Rose’s quiet yearning and his own over-the-top matchmaking.

The Doctor frowned at the Keeper and, to Jack’s eyes, fled the room in Rose’s wake. He turned to the Keeper. “ ** _Tehlsohka_**?” he asked.

The Keeper smirked. Downright **smirked**. “It is not mine to tell, Fixed Point.” He shuffled over to the Renegade cryo-pod and touched a few buttons on the controls. “Ask him, and see what answers he gives.”

As if the Doctor gave answers. Jack punched one fist into another palm. **Dammit**.


	26. Filters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, that’s what you see when you see a timeline end. That’s what it looks like to you,” he explained. Then he gave her a penetrating look. “Dried up rotten banana? Really? Why not a pear?”

The Doctor entered the TARDIS to see Rose seated on the jumpseat, her hand raised, sketching out shapes in the air. Seeing him, she leapt to her feet.

“Doctor!”

He grinned at her. “No black lines?”

“No,” she replied, relieved.

“Good.” He pulled her over to the jumpseat and sat them both down. “Now,” he said, “we need to run you through your paces, Time Lady Rose.”

The way he said her name had always thrilled her a little but it seemed he said it now with a bit more relish. “My—my paces?” she asked.

“Let’s see about teaching you to turn off your perception of time around me.”

“I can turn it off?”

“It’s easier to start with than the filtering you’ll eventually need to do.”

“Why don’t I already know how to do this?” Rose asked. “I mean, I know how to fly the TARDIS.”

“You do?” the Doctor said. “Since when?”

“I dunno,” she replied. “I just **do**.” She stood up and walked over to the console. “First, you initiate the take-off sequence by activating the dematerialization circuit, then you engage the temporal stabilizers to prevent damage during flight, flip this switch to dial the chronometer” —

“All right, all right,” the Doctor said. “So you do know how to fly the TARDIS.” He reached out and pulled her hands from the console. “This is a little different. Come; sit.”

They settled back into the jumpseat. He frowned a little and then said, “Tell me what you see.” As the Doctor spoke, the TARDIS’s hum rose dramatically and all the lines over him turned black.

“They did it again!” she said, gripping his hand. “They all went black!”

“Just black?”

“Well, sort of shrivelly, too. Like a banana that rotted and then got all dried out.”

“So, that’s what you see when you see a timeline end. That’s what it looks like to you,” he explained. Then he gave her a penetrating look. “Dried up rotten banana? Really? Why not a pear?”

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “You see what you see, Rose.”

“Uhm, Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“The TARDIS didn’t feel happy, either. What did you do?”

“I decided that, within the next thirty seconds, I would blow up the TARDIS and this installation.”

“But you didn’t!”

“I decided against it. So the timelines came back.”

“But how can just deciding change it? You didn’t do anything.”

“But I had decided to. And that changed the potential futures you saw.”

“So your choice is what changed it?”

“My decision to act affected what you could possibly perceive. If I had done it, then the possibilities after it change, too.”

“Time can be rewritten?”

“Exactly.”

“So how do I turn it off, so I can stick around you?”

“Picture a veil.”

“A wedding veil?”

The Doctor shrugged. “If that works for you. It should be translucent.”

Rose took a moment to picture a wedding veil—one that she’d secretly drooled over as a young teen—and held it in her mind. “Okay. What next?”

“Now drop it over your head so everything you see is hazy.”

The minute she did, her head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton and she couldn’t breathe. “Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s choking me.”

“Take it off, Rose!”

She did and the crisp clarity of everything snapped back. She blinked and swayed a little.

“All righty-then”— he frowned, “nope, not saying that again—your mind is a bit literal. Mmmmm…. Camera filter? Lighting gel?” He eyed her. “What pops into your mind when you think about…hmmm, needing a way to select something from a background?”

That was easy. “A highlighting cap like Mum used when she did Bev’s hair.”

His eyebrows lifted again. “Always unique, my Rose.” He smiled and added, “Now, imagine that you’re putting that cap over the white bars of my timeline so you can’t see them clearly.”

She nodded. That worked.

“Now, just pull through the part of my timeline where I interact with Jack.”

“Just that part?”

“Just that part.”

“Okay.” And she did. She imagined she had a little hook that “fished out” that little clump of tangled time. It had a rigidity that fought her. “Why’s it so stiff?”

“That’s Jack’s immortality. Makes everything awkward.” He grinned. “Now, put it back.” She did. “Now, look backward at my interactions with your Mum.”

“She slapped you!”

“You were gone for 12 months, not 12 hours.”

She felt her jaw drop. “Seriously? She must have gone mad with worry!”

“You didn’t…?”

“No,” she replied, leaning back a little. “Just how bad of a driver is this you, anyway?”

“Oi!”

“Sorry.”

“Put it back through the cap.”

“Okay. Done.”

“Now make the cap completely opaque, so you can’t see the lines behind it.”

“Okay.” This was getting easier and easier. It was like she already knew how to do it, she just needed to be reminded. She told him so.

“Not surprised,” he said. “They equipped your brain with all the technical information you’ll need as a Time Lady. My job is to help you access that part of your brain so you can use it. I’m less a teacher than a reminder.”

“Like riding a bicycle?” Rose asked. “You never forget?”

“Yep!” he replied, popping the “p.”

“So now I can’t see your timeline at all. It’s completely blank.”

“You’ll be able to see everyone else’s, though. And that will guide you as you take your TARDIS across the universe.”

“Take my TARDIS”—she choked on the words. “Do you want me to leave?”

He swallowed. “I assumed you’d want—that if you had your own TARDIS, and Romana said you’d have your own TARDIS—that you’d want to travel on your own.”

She felt the frustration rise. He still didn’t believe her! “I’m never gonna leave you.”

“Never say never ever, Rose.”

“But I can regenerate now!” She gripped his jacket as he tried to rise. “Our forevers match!”

He gently, but with more strength that she’d expected, removed her hand from his lapel. “No, no they don’t. I’m a used-up old soldier with too much blood on my hands, Rose. And you’re a bright and beautiful new creature, with thousands of years ahead of you. Don’t waste any of them on me. You’re on your second body. I’m on my eleventh.”

“Wait, are you trying to say you’re too old for me?” She glared at him.

“Yes!” he said, springing up from the chair, and pacing across the room in front of her. She glared at him more. “No! I mean, Yes!” he sputtered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posit that timelines are determined two ways:  
> 1) the Decision--what someone decides to do limits the possibilities  
> 2) the Action--what they do fixes the outcomes into a particular subset of the original possibilities (which, in turn, offers the next set of possibilities)  
> It's like a genealogy of time, based on Decisions and Actions, constantly branching out ahead.  
> The Doctor's been intentionally skewing the possibilities for centuries, which is why people who repeatedly wouldn't listen to reason suddenly listen to HIM. Thankfully, he's mostly used his powers for good :)


	27. Time Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack volunteers to "ask them"--and learns some things along the way.

“How does he want to do it?” Jack asked.

“How does who what?”

“How does the Doctor want to ‘ask them?’” Jack asked.

The Keeper frowned. “This installation contains Time Rings.”

Jack’s eyes lit up. “I thought those were a myth!” He rubbed his hands together. “Think I could take one out for a spin?”

“They are Time Lord technology, Fixed Point, not primitive transport vehicles,” the Keeper replied sourly. “They are not for recreational use.” He sniffed. “And certainly not for 51st century human recreational use.”

Jack frowned. “Does the Doctor have to be the one who travels around and asks everyone, or can I do it in his stead?” Jack turned to the elderly being. “I want to ask Ianto.”

The Keeper was eyeing him speculatively. “Can you ask others as well?”

“I could start with Sarah Jane,” Jack replied. “After Ianto.”

“You cannot ask him first.”

Jack’s eyes swiveled back. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when the Lady Rose said the timelines shriveled up and perished?”

Jack nodded, slowly.

“When you speak to your candidate first, all possibilities wither for him and for the Time Lords. When you spoke of the Inquisitor candidate, 98% of the timelines remained bright.”

“Aren’t you skewing it by watching?” Jack asked, eyes narrowing. “Like the Doc told Rose?”

“Yes.”

Jack waited.

“Unlike the Lady Rose, I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re skewing things on purpose…” Jack said.

“Yes,” the Keeper replied. “Whatever it takes to succeed. I will follow all timelines to their most productive ends.”

Jack took that thought in. So this Keeper was willing to push the boundaries, so long as it got the Time Lords re-established and thriving. But… “What if the Doctor disapproves?” he asked.

“Why would he?”

“He’s not a ‘whatever it takes’ kind of guy.”

“You did not know him in the War.”

“No,” Jack replied. “I just saw Rose picking up the pieces afterwards.”

The room was silent. The Keeper looked down at the keyboard his hands rested on, but made no movements, activated no buttons.

“The Doctor was damned by Rassilon’s choices, no matter what he tried,” the Keeper eventually muttered. “Rassilon never understood what he was dealing with.”

“You mean who,” Jack smirked.

“No, Fixed Point,” the Keeper said. “I mean what.”

“The Doctor?”

“Renegades,” the Keeper replied. “I didn’t understand them when I taught them, but I had much time to think after…” He shrugged. “There was an entire class of Renegades. All Loomed within the same few years. All touched with some thread of rebellion, the Doctor…”

“Most of all?”

“Worst of all,” the Keeper replied. “The Master, the War Chief—they wanted proper Gallifreyan order imposed on the universe. The Rani—she was properly distant from what she studied, she wanted to follow her intellect, but she had no ethics regarding sentient species, even the most primitive.”

“Still Time Lord, just not enough?”

“Yes,” the Keeper replied. “But the Doctor? He was bored with it all. Rarely did we teach him anything he really wanted to know. He knew the answers but he didn’t care about his academics.”

“He wanted to be out there,” Jack gestured vaguely, “hands-on.”

The Keeper sighed deeply. “Oh, yes.” He moved out of the room, leaning on the wall as he went, indicating that Jack should follow him. “The Monk was almost as bad, changing historical events to see the timelines blossom and wither before him. But the Doctor,” he slumped briefly against a doorway, “the Doctor changed historical events under a delusion of morality. That he was,” the old being snorted, “making things better.”

“Did he?” Jack asked. “Did he make things better?”

“The Doctor’s acts of interference mostly met his own definition of ‘better.’” The Keeper shrugged. “It is convenient for the one who acts to also be the one who defines.”

Jack felt his own cynicism rise. Yeah. It was convenient. Hartmann and other Torchwood directors had thought so, too.

The Keeper led Jack into a room full of what had to be the legendary Time Rings. They were bracelets, a lot like Jack’s own vortex manipulator. In fact, the similarities made Jack push back his coat sleeve to examine it. The lights were blinking rapidly, as if they couldn’t get a lock on any temporal data. If this was sealed temporally, that would make sense. No vortex access from here. Except, there had to be! Jack opened his mouth…

“There is a single moment which is open to the Web of Time,” the Keeper said. “The Time Rings are programmed to exit and enter the encapsulation though that moment. Your vortex manipulator is too…” the Keeper paused, a brief wrinkle of distaste curling his mouth, “…simplistic to use it.”

Jack rolled his eyes and stuck his other arm out. “I’ll need to talk to Sarah Jane twice,” he said. “Once when she’s clear-headed enough to make a decision and a second time right before she dies.”

The Keeper frowned, wrapping the band of a Time Ring around Jack’s wrist.

“You know the Doctor wouldn’t let you ask them when they’re half out of their minds because they’re dying,” Jack said, voice filled with cynicism. “If you know he’d put the kibosh on it, do you really want to try it anyway?”

“Your suggestion has temporal merit, Fixed Point,” the Keeper replied. “Speak to the candidate, then return for a readjustment to the Time Ring in order to speak to her a second time.” The Keeper touched a rod-like device to the device on Jack’s wrist. “Your device now contains information of the role of each Archetype, so you may explain the idea to the candidates. The Other be with you, Fixed Point.”

A high-pitched hum—somewhere between the TARDIS’ song and the Doctor’s screwdriver—and the vortex swirled up before Jack’s eyes, spinning him through the vortex. It was smoother than travelling by vortex manipulator, but more active.

He was spinning—literally spinning—through time. He hoped he was going to a Sarah Jane who knew who he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be away from my computer this weekend, so I hope you enjoy your early early chapter.  
> The next chapter should be posted May 28th.


	28. Male Reproductive Strategies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor explains some Gallifreyan... problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
>  latara (lah-TAR-ah)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
>  hekal (heh-KAHL)  
>  kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
>  katherikon (keh-THAIR-ih-ken) the "voiced" TH of There/That/They  
>  shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
>  tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
>  temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

“You’re on your second body. I’m on my eleventh.”

“Wait, are you trying to say you’re too old for me?” She glared at him.

“Yes!” he said, springing up from the chair, and pacing across the room in front of her. She glared at him more. “No! I mean, Yes!” he sputtered. “Rose…” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Please. Please let me finish.”

She was dubious, but nodded.

“I mentioned that there were two reproductive strategies on ancient Gallifrey, right?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Male and female. You explained the female one.”

“The problem, my problem, my problem that I don’t want to make your problem, is the male side of that equation.” He opened that old schoolbook of his and laid it on the seat where he had just been sitting. It squatted there all toadlike, taking up space. She glared at it, too, for good measure.

“Alright,” she said, sitting back in the chair, pencil in hand and notebook open on her lap. “Tell me the problem.”

The Doctor leaned backward against the console, arms and legs oh-so-casually crossed. “The male Gallifreyan strategy was to keep the female… attached… to him. If you look at that picture,” he gestured to the schoolbook with his chin, from the safe distance of the console. She picked it up and looked at it.

“Yeah?” Rose asked.

“You’ll notice that Gallifreyan males have four, uhm...”

“Yeah, human men only have two.”

“There’s Gallifreyan biology for you—double everything for safety’s sake. And once it breeches, you’ll notice the member itself is, uhm—”

“It looks a little streamlined, yeah? Like a fancy modern sports car?”

A nervous smile flashed across the Doctor’s face at her comparison. “There are glands on those ridges that emit a bonding hormone while, uhm, interlocked and, uhm, engaged. A Gallifreyan version of oxytocin though much more intense, that keeps the female interested and, uhm, in place.”

She smirked. She really couldn’t help it. “Ribbed for her pleasure, yeah?”

“Rose, please don’t.” The Doctor’s voice was low and quiet. The smile fell from Rose’s face. She could see his leg jittering while the rest of him looked so calm. He frowned down at his leg, and it stopped. He cleared his throat. “Now, in case that doesn’t work, the tip also flares open and it can’t be removed until the male is finished—not without a great deal of discomfort on both parts, but mostly on the female’s. It would rip apart a human, which made it much easier on me when you were here before. All I had to remember is that I would kill you if I ever considered, uhm, anything.” Rose looked up at him, at his oh-so-casual pose against the console, and the pain behind the flippant tone struck her to the heart—hearts. “It was really the only cold shower I needed.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stopped flirting with you.”

“I didn’t want you to stop. It helped me feel alive.” He raked his eyes down her form. “And I hadn’t felt anything—except rage and guilt—for such a long time.” A bitter smile lurched across his mouth. “That leather jacket wasn’t just meant to keep the rain off, you know. It was also meant to keep the monster I am inside.” His face softened. “But you got right under that before I even knew what was happening.”

“Oh.” Rose couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Now the third thing that Gallifreyan males evolved as a strategy was telepathy. It bonded the female to the male permanently—or at least until regeneration. That scrambles the brains and breaks the connection, you know. After a few generations, female Gallifreyans ended up with it, too, and together, it was overwhelmingly effective. The Time Lords tried to forget that telepathy had been part of our reproductive system—tried to dress it up in robes and take it out in public—but we never could quite shake the impulses no matter what we did. Until we stopped having reproductive contact and started Looming the succeeding generations.” He went on to explain how Rassilon's genetic manipulation of the Time Lords almost eliminated their sexuality entirely. But his words blurred into a background buzz as things—thoughts and information—stirred in her head.

“Wait—Looming?” She asked.

“Creating new genetic mixes resulting in offspring.”

“You… wove… children?” His mention of Looming called up images in her head, with technical specs for building them and how to mix the genetic samples. “Wait, I’ve got the complete history of genetic crosses for the Houses of Lungbarrow and Heartshaven in my head. I could **build** a Loom,” Rose said, feeling around at all the information in her brain. She looked up at the Doctor, whose mouth had dropped open. “If we went to the 26 th century, I could build a Loom from a Serenity-class engine, a dermal regenerator and high quantities of biogel.” No, that was distraction. Focus. Time to focus.She shook her head to clear it, and made notes about Looming. “Wait. No. Alright, weaving up a batch of kids. Right.”

The Doctor snorted. “Close enough.”

She frowned. “I know how to build a Loom, though. What Archetype does that make me?”

“ **Latara** ,” he answered. “Loomer. Loom-Mistress.”

“Life Weaver?” she asked, the more literal translation from Gallifreyan percolating in her head.

He smiled at her, from the safety of the console, and said again, “Close enough.”

 


	29. Sarah Jane, Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack asks Sarah Jane Smith a question--the Doctor's question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place between Season One and Season Two of the Sarah Jane Adventures.

The vortex disappeared from around him, but Jack kept spinning through a few steps, stumbling over grass and landing on his knees. The spinning in his head took a bit longer to stop. He shook his head, blinking repeatedly, but jumped to his feet at a young male call of “MUM!” and the sound of footsteps.

“Captain Harkness!” a woman exclaimed.

Jack closed his eyes in gratitude, then smiled and opened them again. His vision had steadied and there she was. Sarah Jane Smith.

She was older than the last time he’d seen her in the TARDIS after returning the Earth to its orbit. “Sarah Jane Smith,” he said with a grin.

Her hands were on his right bicep—another person’s on his left—and she helped him to his feet. Jack glanced to his left to see a young man with shaggy hair. Sarah Jane’s son Luke. He’d heard about that. They helped him into Sarah Jane’s house and sat him at her kitchen table in a chair. Sarah Jane bustled about, making a pot of tea and shooing her son out. Jack could hear the murmurs, but only caught a few scattered words: “Doctor,” “protect,” “Torchwood” and “No.”

It made Jack grin.

His smile faded as Sarah Jane returned to join him at the kitchen table. “Why have you come to visit me, Captain Harkness?”

“I actually was sent by the Doctor to ask you a question,” Jack said.

“Sent by the Doctor?” she replied, quickly putting her tea cup down with a click of china on china. “What’s wrong? What’s coming?”

Jack laughed. “He trains us well, doesn’t he?” Jack stood up and paced the room. “We hear ‘Doctor’ and think, ‘Where’s the alien menace?’”

She chuckled. “Yes, yes he does, rather.” Her brown eyes lifted to his. “So where’s the alien menace?”

“The Doctor’s not here.”

She chuckled. “You know what I mean, Captain Harkness.”

“I actually have a personal question for you, from the Doctor.”

Sarah Jane frowned at him, and he could see the delicate lines around her eyes marking the tension in her frame. “The Doctor doesn’t ask personal questions.”

“He insists on asking this one.” Jack took a sip of tea, then put his cup back down. While he’d acquired the ability to function on tea, he still preferred coffee. “His question is: Would you accept becoming a Time Lord?”

She blinked at him, mouth a little slack. She shook her head and said, “I beg your pardon?”

Jack sighed and set to explain everything—including the return of Rose and the idea of Archetypes. He made sure to mention the Doctor’s irritation with being assigned the Renegade Archetype.

“Did he actually pout?” she asked, not a little scandalized. “He was a champion pouter when I travelled with him, but I thought he’d have grown out of it by now. A man his age.”

Jack chuckled. “He’ll outgrow that when he stops being vain.”

Sarah Jane laughed outright. Then she sobered. “I would be an Inquisitor? What would that be?”

Jack punched in the question into his wristcomp. “It’s a combination of investigator and, well, something along the lines of the Senior Law Lord. You’re in charge of investigating crimes, criminal behavior and hearing cases.”

“But I don’t know a thing about Gallifrey’s laws!” Sarah Jane sat upright.

Jack put his hands on hers. “It’s okay. They’ll put it all in your head for you.” He grinned. “I was talking to Rose and she has a metric ton of information in her head that she never learned. It’s all just there for her to use.” He let go of her wrists. “The question is, Sarah Jane Smith: when you’re dying, do you want to have the Keeper whisk you away and drop you into a Time Lord body?”

She looked down at the table. “I—I don’t know.” Sarah Jane sketched some abstract pattern on the tabletop with her fingernail. “I need to think about this.”

Jack nodded. “I’ll hop ahead a week or so, so you have a chance to think it over.” He saluted her and walked out the door. One twist of the button and he was standing in Cardiff, watching Ianto walk to work.

Why he decided to torture himself, he wasn’t sure. But he understood the Doctor a hell of a lot more, these days.


	30. One More Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What does that all mean, now? I’m not fragile anymore, it won’t hurt me, you won’t hurt me.”

Rose scribbled in her notebook, trying to put down all the information the Doctor had given her about Gallifreyan—and thus, Time Lord—reproduction. Looms and mating strategies and diagrams. She snorted a bit. Parts of that schoolbook were going to have to end up in her book.

Maybe she’d call it _Time Lording for Dummies_.

Rose finished writing and looked up at the Doctor, who was staring intently at her. “So, Doctor, can I ask one more question?”

“Yes,” he said, far too carefully.

“What does that all mean, now—since I’m not human anymore?”

“Dammit, Rose!” He ran his hands through his hair, and clenched his fists in it.

She jerked backward in the chair. “No, really, I don’t understand! I’m not fragile anymore, it won’t hurt me, you won’t hurt me.”

“Rose, if we try to go down that path, there’s no half-measures. I can’t just lie with you for pleasure and stop. Because I have wanted you since you were only a fragile human—you, Rose, wonderfully enthusiastic, caring you—and deep down, I don’t want to stop at half-measures. Deep down, I want you. All of you. And if we started this, I would pin you down underneath me and fill your body with me and flood your mind with my presence until you wouldn’t feel anything else in the universe except me, in every way there is.”

 _Oh. Oh, yes._ She felt flushed and warm and like her joints had turned to jelly.

He reached down on either side of himself to grasp the lip of the TARDIS console, fingers white-knuckled, his frame quivering with suppression. “I want your **_shakaral_** to set me off again and again and again, because you want me as much as I want you and you find me worthy. I want you so delirious with pleasure that you can’t tell if your **_temekarn_** is open or closed. I want to taste your skin and stroke your mind and feel your heartsbeat underneath mine.”

He paused and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing, and calmed his breathing.

“But there will be many, many Time Lords for you to choose from, Rose, by the time this is finished. I don’t want you to feel trapped in a bond with me, when your other options become available. Oh, I don’t **want** to give you this choice, Rose. I want you bonded to me. Now. Yesterday. Years ago. But I know that I **should** give you this choice. And I’m trying to make sure you have it.” He looked up at her, brown eyes wide open and earnest, to meet her frown.

“I already made my choice,” Rose said, her voice dropping, her accent strengthening. “I told you I would be with you forever. I told you that years ago.”

“Rose, please don’t make this any more difficult.” His voice was tight and strained, his lips stretched over his teeth in a closemouthed grimace. “It’s… complicated.”

“But it’s not complicated,” Rose protested. “It’s so easy. I love you.”

The Doctor inhaled sharply. “Rose, I’m forty-five times your age! I’m on my eleventh body. I regenerate one more time and after that—I’m done. Finished. Down for the count. Kaput. You go on alone.” His jaw tightened. “I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

“If we don’t have a lot of time together,” she asked, “why are we wasting it?”

“Rose, I’m not”—

She just talked over him. “And if you try to tell me that you’re not worth loving, I’m going to slap you so hard, you’re going to feel it in your next body. You are not a worthless killer. You are not used-up. You are worth everything good. And you deserve to be loved.” Rose saw his jaw tighten and clamp down over the denial that she didn’t need telepathy to know was popping up in his head.

_Oh. Telepathy._

She stood up and stepped over to him, notebook and schoolbook and pencil sliding unheeded to the floor. “Doctor,” she said, as she stopped next to him and touched the naked skin of his wrist with two careful fingers. “Time Lords are telepathic, yeah?” He nodded, with a tense, jerking twitch. “So you can you feel what I’m feeling?” she asked him. “You can hear what I’m thinking?” She thought of all the wonderful things he was: how he loved new discoveries; his excitement over the smallest beautiful things; how joy transformed his faces (the old daft one she’d fallen for and this newer, foxier one she couldn’t imagine leaving behind); how much he just **cared** about the living beings they ran across. How he’d helped her see what she could become, how she could help people (even if they had six limbs and purple skin), and how worthwhile her life could be.

Something flickered behind his gaze and he gasped. The buzz-purr in her brain got stronger. “Rose,” he breathed out. “When I run out of regenerations and die, you’ll feel it. I’ll be torn from your mind like a limb from your body.”

The professor in Rose’s head agreed with the Doctor, giving her all sorts of reasons why Time Lords were above this sort of thing. Logical, sensible reasons, including the pain of loss. Rose thought about her mum, hairless and unconscious in hospital, thought about her dad, stepping into the roadway to save the universe. And how grateful she was that she’d had time with them both, rather than never knowing them, never having them in her life.

The professor in her head had nothing to say to that.

“I’ve lived through losing everything before,” she said quietly. “I’ve lost m’dad, m’mum, Mickey, my first you. I’ve even seen my planet burning up.” One hand rested on the Doctor’s cheek, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth, where the lines of a smile ought to have been, if he’d been happy, as she thought he should be. “I won't be alone the way you're alone. I’ll still have friends and all the other Time Lords, the ones who were your friends, too. When you have friends, you can get through anything. You should know that yourself.”

“Oh, Rose, you don’t understand. I would be”—

“No, Doctor,” she found herself replying. “It’s you who doesn’t understand. My-my **_shakaral_** ”— she stumbled over the word—“is chafing on the inside of these trousers with just the idea of being with you. You **are** my choice. You. Only you. Always you. Even back when you were all ears and leather.” She pried his fingers off the console and brought them to her lips. She kissed each finger on his right hand, then moved to do the same on his left. The scent of his skin made something ripple inside her and she felt herself release into her knickers. His nostrils flared, his mouth dropped open and he licked his lips, his eyes grew heavy-lidded.

He might have still held out if she hadn’t leaned close to him, pressed her temple against his, and murmured in his ear, “So do it then, Time Lord. Pin me down and fill my body and flood my mind. What are you waiting for?” A shudder seemed to pass through him and his left arm swung up to grab her own left wrist in an iron grip and strode through the doorway leading to the rest of the TARDIS, towing her through the hallways as she tripped over her own feet trying to keep up, trying to avoid the heels of his Chucks as she stumbled in his wake, arriving in a dim room with pictures showing an orange sky and silver-leafed trees.

_Gallifrey._

She’d never been there but the professor in her head knew. Gallifrey. Of course he would torture himself whenever he needed to sleep.

_Oh, Doctor._

She turned her face his way, only to see that he was tasting the air around them, nostrils flared, mouth slightly open, eyes dark. He pushed her down on the bed, pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and sealed the door, then began to shed his jacket and unbutton his oxford. She was still staring at him when he glanced up and growled, in a low voice that made her quiver and feel damp between her thighs, “Any clothes you don’t want torn, you had better remove now.”

She blinked up at him.

His voice went even more quiet and intent.

**“Now.”**

She hurried to comply. She rather liked this hoodie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and Jack (and vice versa).


	31. Sarah Jane, Twice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack goes to Cardiff while Sarah Jane makes a decision.

Jack stood in the shadows of the old Foster building in Cardiff, his grey trench blending into the sooty city grime coating the stone as he watched Ianto Jones step onto the center of the Hub. He almost missed the click of the safety behind him.

“I don’t know who you are, but you can turn around slowly.”

Jack sighed. “Gwen, don’t.”

“I just left Jack Harkness down in the Hub and he was wearing different clothes.”

Jack turned slowly. There she was, gap between her teeth and everything. “Time traveler, Gwen,” he said. “Immortal time traveler.”

She lowered her weapon, brows furrowed. “How long has it been, Jack?”

“I have no idea.”

She flinched. “That long?”

There was no need to reply.

“Why’re you here, then?”

“I was in the area.”

“Thought you’d stop by and see the sights?”

Jack’s eyes flicked to the Hub. “Yeah.”

“We’re all dead, aren’t we?”

“What part of immortal don’t you understand, Gwen?”

She sighed. “Go on, then. Go. You’ve had your look around. Leave before you come out and bump into yourself.” At his surprised glance, she said, “I’ve met your Doctor friend enough times to know that’s never a good thing.”

He nodded and hit the return on his vortex manipulator, set for a week later. He landed in Sarah Jane’s backyard again, hearing the chatter of young voices floating out of her kitchen window.

“Mom!” he heard Luke yell. “Captain Harkness is back!”

Sarah Jane came out of the house—frailer than he remembered her ever looking. “Ms. Smith?”

“You, Captain, are as much of a terrible driver as the Doctor,” she said with a smile.

“How long have I been gone?” he asked, guilt rising.

“Seven years, Captain,” she said. “Not seven days.”

He nodded.

“Come in for tea?”

He hesitated.

“Come in for tea, Captain Harkness, and relax,” Sarah Jane Smith said, smiling. “My answer is ‘Yes.’”

Jack swallowed in relief and went in for tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	32. Tehlsohka, Tehlnakarn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose had challenged him to fill her body and flood her mind.  
> The Doctor delivers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan mating, first hand. This chapter contains mature material.  
> NSFW.  
> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
>  tehlsohka (tayl-SO-kah)  
>  tehlnakarn (TAYLN-ah-karn)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
>  hekal (heh-KAHL)  
>  kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
>  katherikon (keh-THAIR-ih-ken) the "voiced" TH of There/That/They  
>  latara (lah-TAR-ah)  
>  shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
>  tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
>  temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

She’d just managed to skinny out of her knickers when he pounced on her. She’d never heard him breathing heavily before—he’d never seemed to run out of air—but now he was panting as he pushed her back on the bed. He grabbed her wrists with one hand and pulled them up over her head, hovering over her, the tips of her breasts—barely brushing his chest—being their only other point of connection. She looked up into his face. His eyes were all pupil, staring down at her blindly while she struggled to get her hands free. It was grossly unfair that she didn’t get to touch him and he wasn’t even touching her. He blinked and his expression shifted and she knew—she knew!—he was going to back away again and that wasn’t going to happen, no, he was hers, she’d finally gotten him this far and there was no way she was going to let him stop. She lunged her head up and latched her mouth onto his, thinking fiercely, _Mine, mine, mine_. He dragged in a ragged breath through his nose and tore his mouth away from hers with a growl, then kicked her legs apart with his knees and thrust inside.

She gasped. She could feel every centimeter of him. It was incredible. Then she felt a wave of warmth pass over her, washing away the scattered smatterings of unease and doubt that she hadn’t realized she’d still had. The idea of staying underneath him like this—possibly for the next century or so—sounded absolutely delicious. She canted her hips upward and wrapped her legs around his waist. He released her hands and sank even deeper into her, with a throaty groan he muffled against the side of her neck, then began to slowly rock and grind against her. She could feel the tiny little tentacles inside her

— ** _filakha_** , the professor inside her head corrected—

rippling around him, stroking his shape in ways she thought only a tongue or fingers could. She could feel the flared head of him within the channel inside her, and it made her press her chest up against his in an effort to get even closer. The ripples in her **_filakha_** were starting to organize themselves into waves that slid from the base of him to his tip, back down, and back up. Rose had always enjoyed sex but this—this was amazing. He felt so **good** , the way his tip flared, the ridges pulsing along his length, it all made her nerves sing. She felt more turned on than she’d ever felt before in her life and slid her hands down his lean and muscled back to his amazing arse, gripping it as he rocked against her. He hissed and bit her, right where her neck met her shoulder, and another wave of warm compliance washed through her. Oh yeah, she could stay under him like this forever. Her hands moved in smooth circles over the clenching muscles of his bum. As he ground into her with swiveling hips, her fingers tightened around those muscles and he bit her neck again. She tilted her head back as pleasure washed through her body and he turned his face to nuzzle the skin under her earlobe.

 _“ **Tehl** ,” _he muttered. _“ **Tehlsohka**.”_

 _Mine,_ her mind translated. _She-who-is-mine-alone._

And the buzzing inside her head was resolving, like a radio being tuned, into a throbbing presence like a double heartbeat made entirely of Him. She could feel his… his **want**. Contact, more than just skin to skin, he was so hungry for mind-to-mind contact that it almost overwhelmed her. She could feel his thoughts, as they felt her thoughts, about feeling his thoughts. She struggled with the focus to open her **_temekarn_** as widely as possible before their thoughts became completely mixed together. She’d decided she would hold every drop of his that she could. He was more than worthy—he was the best man she had ever known. His rocking rhythm faltered briefly, the pulse of him… stuttered… inside her head.

_: :Shocked. Touched. Grateful. Amazed.: :_

He halted physically, too, and she cursed him, inside her head, for even thinking of stopping. She never knew whether she had thought in English or Gallifreyan, but she felt the flash of his amusement spark through the combustion of their mutual sensuality.

Her **_filakha_** stroked and rippled as he rocked into her, preparing to milk his seed into her **_temekarn_** , to be treasured and held close. _“ **Tehln** ,” _she gasped, the words bursting forth from her brain as she frantically kissed his neck and shoulders. _“ **Tehlnakarn**.” _

_(Mine,_ she thought. _My-seedgiver-to-hoard.)_

Then her **_shakaral_** made contact with him—and the throb of his pleasure and the wild joy of his surprise washed her brain white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and/or Jack (and vice versa).


	33. Sarah Jane, Thrice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane said "Yes."

Jack activated the Time Ring and the vortex spun around him, flinging him to the floor of the time pearl. The Keeper frowned at him.

“You must not use your vortex manipulator, Fixed Point,” he said. “Its energies are skewed by the Time Ring. The Inquisitor candidate was almost lost.”

“Seven years instead of seven days.”

“Quite.” The Keeper lurched away from the cryo-pod chamber he was leaning on. “She has agreed, however, and her timelines are now bright and full of possibility.” He creaked up to the control panels and shuffled the pods until the white Inquisitor pod lay before him.

“Should the Doctor be here?” Jack asked. Would the Time Lord be offended to be left out of this? Would it fail if he weren't present? Jack didn't want to ruin Ianto's chances.

The Keeper stared off into a middle distance, slight frown on his face. “No,” he replied slowly. “To draw him here, now, would disturb a causal nexus which must occur. The Lady Rose **must** succeed.” He nodded brusquely. “I have located three of the candidate’s death possibilities which branch from the timeline in which you spoke with her. The outcomes to the timelines are the same.” He glanced over to Jack with a sudden, curious hesitancy. “Which one would the Doctor prefer?”

“The one where she was the happiest, I think” Jack said. “Happier humans should make happier Time Lords.”

The Keeper nodded and pressed a few buttons and the chamber was lit with the same golden coruscating light that had preceded Rose’s arrival in her new body. “We have followed the Doctor’s requests. We have chosen the happiest version of the candidate. All the possibility branches from this selection shine brightly for the new Time Lords.” His eyes burned like coals when he turned them on Jack. “The Inquisitor shall lead the way—the Time Lords shall live again!”

The lid of the pod slid back and Sarah Jane Smith’s young face lay sleeping in a wash of biogel. Her eyes fluttered and opened.

“Captain Harkness?”

“Lookin’ good, ma’am.”

“Oh, stop.” He helped her sit up and took the wrap from the Keeper. Late 20th century people, Jack knew from experience, had a lot of body modesty issues.

“My Lady Inquisitor,” the Keeper said with a deep bow and a pleased air about him.

Sarah Jane turned her eyes to the Keeper. Jack was close enough to see her pupils dilate as she flinched backward.

“You?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	34. Refractory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterwards, Rose and the Doctor talk.

She rushed back to awareness of herself with him easing out of her, her **_filakha_** twitching randomly with the aftershocks. The pulse of him in her brain had faded to a faint swirl of emotions. Her fingers latched onto his wrist as he tried to shuffle backwards out of the bed.

“Don’t you dare.” She opened her eyes to see his startled face. “Come here,” she said, tugging on his wrist.

“Rose,” he whispered, “I shouldn’t have—”

She lunged up and wrapped both arms around him, pulling him down over her. Their skin made contact with an intoxicating wave of pleasure: his exchanged with her, hers exchanged with him, and the ripples where they reflected back through the other’s mind. “Don’t. You. Dare.” He opened his mouth to say something and she kissed him to shut him up. “Don’t you dare ruin this by feeling guilty,” she continued when they’d parted, both gasping for air. “You’re not going to ruin it by skiving off like you’re worried that Jack’s gonna come in and take pictures. It’s the best sex I’ve ever had in my entire life and I’m not going to let you apologize for it.”

He blinked at her. “Wait—did you just compare this to human…?”

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “I know it’s a bit apples and oranges, but—”

“—it’s nothing like human sex!”

“How would **you** know?” A slow flush crept up his chest to his face. Rose started to laugh. “Oh, don’t tell me, Doctor, you’ve been sneaking around, eavesdropping on somebody?”

His jaw dropped. “Rose!” he said in scandalized tones, “it was completely by accident! I would never....” He sounded like her mum’s friend Phyllis, talking about Charles and Camilla. It made her laugh more. “Rose, that’s not even funny!”

She looked up at him, laughter trickling away. “Then what are you embarrassed about?” He glanced away, and mumbled something. She sighed and laid a hand on the side of his face, turning his gaze back to her. “Doctor, what did you do?”

“I’ve marked you and I’ve claimed you,” he said, touching the bite marks on her neck. “And I let you mark and claim me.”

Rose looked up at the muscles that ran from his neck to his shoulder. Oh, she’d bit him, too. She frowned. She didn’t remember… “When did I bite you?” Rose asked. “I don’t remember doing that.”

He swallowed and worked his jaw, and he ended up rasping the answer. “When you said—when you called me **_tehlnakarn_** ,” he said. His voice rose uncertainly.

“Oh,” she replied, lips curling up into an unconscious smile as she met his eyes, his brows canted dubiously over them. She traced the marks of her teeth in his flesh with gentle fingers and watched his skin twitch and shiver. “I meant what I said,” she murmured. “You’re **mine**. You didn’t ‘let’ me do anything. I claimed you and your seed”—she smirked—“of my own free will. If you regenerate on me, I’ll just do it all over again. I’d have done it with the last you, if I’d had the chance.”

Tiny expressions warred across his face, going by so fast she couldn’t catch them all, but she caught guilt easily enough from where it burbled over in his head. She sighed. “What’s wrong?”

“One of the ways Time Lord telepathy works is that they—we—change each other’s emotional imprints. You won’t be able to think about any previous partners without thinking of my, uhm, superiority.”

“Including previous versions of you?” She grinned, tongue between teeth, as he nodded. _Weird,_ she thought, _because_ —“Well, you are superior to any human—that’s true at least.” He was scratching the back of his head, though, and that was a sign of another shoe being dropped. “Did I do that to your memories, too? I don’t remember doing anything like that.”

He flashed his bright smile, scooting up the bed to lie on his side next to her. He propped his head up on one arm, tracing one of his agile fingers up across her ribcage, leaving behind what felt like rainbow ribbons of light. “Oh, Rose Tyler, you most certainly did. That brilliant Time Lord brain of yours went on automatic and made sure that I think of you all the time. And how superior you are in every way.”

She frowned. There was something going on there. “Did I hurt you somehow, then? Is that why you’re so…” she poked at the kernel of Doctorness that was still inside her head and saw him frown slightly. “I dunno, worried? Guilty? Embarrassed? Because you’re all that…but I can tell you’re awfully smug, too.”

She smiled to see him blush again. But he paired that blush with a knowing, lazy grin that made her feel little electric shocks dancing up her spine and her **_filakha_** ripple slightly. _That was going to take some getting used to._ Then he rubbed his face and sighed.

“The problem, Rose, and this is a problem, is that right now, you don’t have any mental privacy. You’re wide open, radiating that you’re bonded. So am I—it’s an after-effect, it’s us telling all the other Gallifreyans that we’re both taken and don’t bother to try because you won’t succeed—but it’s left you vulnerable,” he said. “In few days, I’ll be able to pull my shields back together, and I have centuries of experience with mental disciplines that you just have an intellectual understanding of. You’re safe so long as you stay in the TARDIS or at least in the time pearl, but we can’t have you going anywhere until you’ve had a chance to turn your theoretical knowledge of telepathic shielding into actual practice.”

“Do I need to start that right now?” Rose frowned. “I suppose I can, if you show me how, yeah?”

“You can’t.”

“What?”

“For at least two Gallifreyan days—or a little less than three Earth days—our mental disciplines are going to be about as organized as a flock of pigeons in Trafalgar Square,” he confessed, and she felt the mix of emotions running through him, like music coming out of a club. On the top, the melody— _::Embarrassment. Guilt. Wonder. Doubt.::_ Running under it, like the thumping bass line— _::Relief. Uncertainty. Joy.::_ And there was a faint flutter of something else. It was very… male, she supposed, because it seemed very impressed with itself.

“Oi!”

She laughed. “Well, you are, Doctor,” she answered, grinning up at him, “and you really shouldn’t be.” He looked insulted. “Once doesn’t prove anything, you know. Being able to repeat things is awfully important. You’ve got to prove yourself over… time.” She looked up at him through lowered eyelashes, while walking her fingers slowly up his chest.

“I’ll give you ‘time,’” he replied, meeting her gaze with a slowly kindling one of his own. He lowered his head and began to kiss her neck, inhaling the scent of her skin. She could feel the smile on his lips and, inspired, ran a mental hand down that kernel of Doctorness in her head. He stiffened, so she pictured inside her head something she’d always imagined doing with him, and ran that mental hand across his presence again.

The deep-voiced growl she received was reward enough. She laughed, low in the back of her throat, and let him prove himself, **_shakaral_** already swelling with anticipation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and/or Jack (and vice versa).


	35. Bridging Gaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Jack had never seen Sarah Jane Smith at the height of her powers, he realized. He’d always seen her older, a little more careful, a hell of a lot more gentle and self-consciously kind."

The Keeper kept remarkably calm, it seemed to Jack, for someone who’d called up such a tone of voice in an otherwise unflappable woman.

“My Lady Inquisitor?” the Keeper replied.

She frowned. “There’s a hole in my mind where information about you is supposed to be”—

—“indeed, my Lady Inquisitor”— and Jack had the sudden urge to punch the bastard for the smug expression on his face. Fucking Time Lord.

—“and I am aware,” she continued, “that this hole in my mind is a favor you asked the Lady President for when she requested that you serve as Keeper here”—

The hell? This bastard put gaps like his in Sarah Jane’s head, like he’s put in Rose’s head, as a fucking **favor**? Jack suddenly knew that every one of these Time Lord bodies must have that gap, that sudden shocking abyss inside their memories where something was supposed to be and wasn’t. An empty pit just lying in wait to mess them up. And all for fucking politics. For somebody’s public image and ‘good name,’ like they’d done with the 456 on Earth and cost Jack everything. Ianto. And Alice. And Steven. A flash of rage rose up in him. Fucking politicians.

“You put a gap in my memory and removed facts on purpose,” Sarah Jane was saying, “in order to protect yourself from the social consequences of your crimes”—

Jack had never seen Sarah Jane Smith at the height of her powers, he realized. He’d always seen her older, a little more careful, a hell of a lot more gentle and self-consciously kind. This was the clever and bold woman the Doctor had met in his third incarnation, fearless and angry at injustice and determined to uncover the truth regardless of the cost.

—“no, my Lady Inquisitor,” the Keeper interrupted, a flicker of concern in his eyes, “also to protect the timelines! With the information you have remaining, you must see how important it is”—

—“but my very human memories are unaffected by your maneuvering,” she continued right over his words, her voice shaking with repressed emotion. Whether it was fear or anger, Jack couldn’t say, but he saw that flicker of concern grow to something more substantial in the Keeper’s face as her head swiveled and her gaze pinned him down, her dark eyes flashing with what, Jack wasn’t sure. “I. Know. You.”

The Keeper backed away until he bumped into a cryo-pod behind him.

Her voice dropped to a whisper—or a hiss. “What are you doing here, Lord President Borusa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	36. By Mouth and Tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, that tongue of yours, Rose,” he murmured as he worked his way back up to her earlobe. “Every time you smiled at me with that tongue, all I could do was wonder how it tasted.”

They both fell asleep.

Being Gallifreyan, they didn’t stay that way. But she felt the shock from him, inside her head, when he woke up to discover her watching his face while he slept.

“You don’t look nearly so worn out, when you’re sleeping,” Rose offered, filling the silence.

“Worn out?” the Doctor huffed, his emotions rising and falling in the back of her head—wait, was it the back? Or something more like under? Or maybe off to the side? It was hard to tell—“Superior Gallifreyan physiology here,” he said.

“Superior Gallifreyan physiology that fell asleep after sex, just like any human bloke,” Rose countered with a grin, tongue between her teeth.

The Doctor’s eyes fell to her mouth and he launched himself at her faster than she anticipated, mouth latched over her own, delving into her mouth with his tongue.

The taste of the Doctor’s mouth, the texture of his tongue, the press of his lips against her own, he had chased down her tongue and had teased it into his own mouth and was gently sucking on it, sending shivering pulses straight to her sex. The sensation and the textures and the smell of his skin as she inhaled through her nose, it all piled together to make her dizzy with wanting him.

She pulled back a little, breaking the connection of their mouths with a wet sound that she probably shouldn’t have found erotic. But her mouth was still full of the taste of his tongue and her **_filakha_** were rippling. She felt dazed.

“Doctor?”

“Hmmmm?” he hummed at her, kissing his way down her neck, nipping at her flesh in ways that made her want to languish in his arms. “Oh, that tongue of yours, Rose,” he murmured as he worked his way back up to her earlobe. “Every time you smiled at me with that tongue, all I could do was wonder how it tasted.”

Rose giggled and pushed the Doctor back, firmly. He fell against the rumpled bedclothes with a look of surprise on his face, eyebrows up near his hairline and mouth a round “O” of reddened, well-kissed lips. A sense of mischief ran over her—her own, she thought, not his—and she scooted down to his knees. A line appeared between his brows and he looked like he was about to speak as she placed her hands on either side of his hips. Looking down at him, she ran her tongue gently up his sealed **_kamdarak_** , from back to front. He convulsed. She jerked her head away and looked up at his face.

She had never seen such a blissful look on him—not even when he’d had banana ice cream with banana sauce on a chocolate-covered banana. His mouth hung open, his eyes half-lidded, his breath stuttering and catching. The feeling flooding over to her was surprise soaked in pleasure. She licked his **_kamdarak_** again, this time looking up at him under her brows.

His sudden inhale was a pleasure all its own. She bent her head again to lick and kiss and tease at his opening. He tasted amazing—like honey and tea and spice and citrus, like Earl Grey without so much bitterness, like orange blossom tea and nutmeg and cinnamon and high-end brandy. A little more wetness was emerging from his opening and she lapped at the seam between, with long gentle strokes of her tongue. “Rose!” he gasped, trembling. She gathered love and pleasure in her mental hand and stroked the kernel of Doctorness inside her head with her feelings. She felt surprise and joy and a wisp of fear in return. Before she could figure out why he was fearful, his **_kamdarak_** opened, parting on each side of his emerging ** _arok_**. His fear inside her head grew.

It was like a penis, mostly, long and cylindrical, with a noticeable cap that seemed wrinkled or fluted. She ran the tip of her tongue across it and the cap flared out with a matching flare of embarrassment and fear from the Doctor. Lowering her head, she ever-so-gently lipped at the very tip, not going further than the flared head. She let him feel her curiosity and pleasure as she explored him with lips and tongue. Greatly daring, she ran the tip of her tongue under the edges of his flared cap and smirked when he convulsed again. Pleasure pulsed through her mind; his low wheeze and an additional guttural sound were all the reward she needed. Shuffling forward on her knees a bit, she leaned over him and gently stroked her fingers down each side of his **_kamdarak_** , watching his pelvis arch into her touch.

His body was so sensitive! She was amazed to see him gasp and twitch and writhe in response to everything she did. She ran her tongue up the side of his **_arok_** , wet and flavorful in her mouth, and zigzagged the tip around the ridges, feeling the warmth of that hormone he’d talked about heating her lips and tongue. It made her drool a little and her **_temekarn_** twitched inside her. Feeling reckless, she flicked her tongue and lips all the way up his length to the flared cap, while he knotted the bedding under his hands and his mind hovered between shock and pleasure. As gently as possible, she slid her mouth over the entire end, encasing the flared cap inside her mouth.

His abdomen clenched and he almost sat upright, then his head and shoulders slammed backward into the pillows and his hips arched up into her mouth. The flood of gratification that overloaded his brain and washed into hers made her **_filakha_** ripple and her **_shakaral_** throb against the duvet.

Suddenly a flash of fear and embarrassment welled up. He croaked out a half-choked “Rose!” as his fluid filled her mouth. She tried to swallow it, but there was too much and she was so surprised, and a lot of it ended up on the bedclothes. She tried to blot it away with the sheet, but it was definitely going to be a wet spot.

Ripples passed up and down the Doctor’s body for 1 minute and 17 seconds as she leaned over him and watched. Then his eyes opened, half-slitted in the dim orange-tinted light of the room, and he held out his arms to her. She fell into them gladly, still really turned on, but it was so worth it watching him finally, really lose control.

He lifted his fingers to her temple and she felt the full depth and complexity of his emotions— _: :Wonder. Satisfaction. Joy. Exhaustion. Love. Astonishment.: :_ —and the finer threads of other feelings underneath— _: :Embarrassment. Guilt. Longing. Shame.: :_

Rose pulled her head back from where it had been resting on his chest. Shame? Why on earth would he feel shame? She lifted her hand to his temple—by some prompt she didn’t understand—and let him feel her joy and desire and feeling of accomplishment. She felt his chest bobble under her arm a split second after she felt his laughter bubble up in her head like carbonation in a fizzy drink.

She shook her head, the Doctor’s hand falling away. He half-smiled at her, with a lazy, sated curl in the end of his mouth. “What’s so funny?” she asked him in a whisper.

He reached up and pulled her back down to his chest, then kissed the top of her head. “You’re proud of what I’m ashamed of,” he replied just as quietly, his fingers combing through her hair. “Time Lords shouldn’t lose control like that. It’s one of the rules.”

She stroked her hand over his ribcage, in long soothing motions. “I thought you didn’t believe in rules, Theta.”

His hand stilled in her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and/or Jack (and vice versa).


	37. Lord President Borusa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane confronts the Keeper.

The Keeper’s eyes grew round and he craned his wattled neck to look around the room.

“The Doctor is not here, Lord Borusa,” Sarah Jane said.

“I beg you, my Lady Inquisitor, refer to me as the Keeper!” the old Time Lord pleaded. “You know what the Doctor will do, if he discovers I am part of this!”

Sarah Jane’s eyes grew distant and she raised a hand much like Jack had seen Rose do, tracing something in the air that he could not see. “I do, Lord Borusa,” she finally replied. “You cannot hide forever.”

“I do not need forever, my Lady Inquisitor,” he replied, “for I am near my death. At last.”

Sarah Jane stared at the Keeper for a long moment and Jack tried to hold his breath during it. The air was freighted with history and fraught with undercurrents he could feel but didn’t understand.

“You do not seek immortality, Lord Borusa?”

The Keeper gave a wheezing bark. Jack thought it was probably a laugh. “I was a fool.”

“Yes,” Sarah Jane agreed. “You were.” She eyed him sharply, her eyes narrowed. “And your path now?”

“I will bring the rest of the Doctor’s friends into their appropriate Archetypes, so the Time Lords may live again. And then”—he hesitated.

—“and then?” she asked.

—“and then, I shall lay down my life and perish with this facility,” the Keeper said with a sigh.

“That is your course?” Sarah Jane asked him, with a formality Jack found odd.

“It is.”

“You will not turn back?”

The Keeper’s mouth twitched, a gleam in his eye. “Never.”

“Then give up the ring.”

The Keeper’s tufted eyebrows lifted and he pulled a ring from the same finger Jack had once worn a wedding band. Rough red crystals glinted in the dim lights of the cryo-chamber as he held it out to Sarah Jane. She gazed down at it and looked the Keeper in the face.

“You are willing to give it up.”

“I am,” he replied. “Gladly.”

“Then wear it as long as you must,” she said. “You understand now.”

“Yes, my Lady Inquisitor,” he sighed. “Everything has its time. And everything ends.”

“Even Time Lords,” she added.

“Even individual Time Lords,” the Keeper said. “The Time Lords themselves should not. Time is too easily abused without some guardianship.”

“As arrogant as ever,” Sarah Jane laughed. “Put the ring back on”—she paused —“Keeper.”

A faint quirk of lips was all Jack saw. “As you command, my Lady Inquisitor,” the Keeper replied, sliding the ring back onto his hand where it seemed to fade from sight.

“Now, my Lord Keeper,” Sarah Jane said, briskly, “I need clothes.” At the Keeper’s first twitch, she corrected herself. “Useful clothes, not robes.”

“I got you covered,” Jack smirked, holding out a set of red and white striped overalls, which had three red stars over the chest. The Keeper stared.

Sarah Jane clutched her stomach and laughed.

And laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	38. Post-Coital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I wasn’t a person,” the Doctor replied, softly. “No one was, until they graduated from the Academy. Until then, we were test cultures of our Houses.”

He reached up and pulled her back down to his chest, then kissed the top of her head. “You’re proud of what I’m ashamed of,” he replied just as quietly, his fingers combing through her hair. “Time Lords shouldn’t lose control like that. It’s one of the rules.”

She stroked her hand over his ribcage, in long soothing motions. “I thought you didn’t believe in rules, Theta.”

His hand stilled in her hair.

She didn’t comprehend what she’d said until she realized he’d stopped breathing, too. She lifted her head from its place on his chest. “Doctor?”

He was staring at her with that little line between his brows. “Wha—what did you call me?”

She stared back. “Uhm, Doctor?”

“Before that.”

“Uhm,” she cast her mind back and, to her surprise, the conversation came to her in crisp detail, every word. “Theta?” she asked. “Why did I call you that?”

“It was my name, once,” he replied at the same time the professor in her head said

—Theta Sigma Lungbarrowmas, self-designated ‘The Doctor’ —

and completely freaked her out. “They called you Theta Sigma?” she asked, no, demanded. “That’s a terrible name—no, that’s not even a name!” For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, Rose was infuriated. “That’s a low ranking, subpar crypto-numeric designation. How could they do that to a little boy! The nerve of those people! I’ve got a mind to slap them, I have.”

The Doctor’s mouth had fallen open but no sound was coming out. He moved his gob a few times, but…

“Doctor?” Rose asked, feeling a little self-conscious.

“Are you angry, Rose?” he asked, his voice shaking a little. His face was pale, drained, and his freckles stood out against the white.

“Not at you!” she assured him, brushing her hands over his chest. “Not at you, at all. I’m angry with them. Stupid Time Lords.” She heard him inhale sharply. “That’s not even a name! That’s a cell culture designation. They didn’t even treat you like you were a person!”

“I wasn’t a person,” the Doctor replied, softly. “No one was, until they graduated from the Academy. Until then, we were test cultures of our Houses.”

The professor in Rose’s head did nothing to disagree with that statement. The realization made Rose’s stomach flip and twist. She shook her head, in shock and disbelief. “But you were a person. You had opinions and feelings and”—she lifted her eyes back to his. There was pain there, old pain, in his eyes and it oozed over her, an ache that made her chest feel scooped out, with some cold metal utensil scraping the back of her ribcage on the inside. She could feel tears filling up her eyes and she reached out to touch the Doctor’s bloodless cheek. She couldn’t stop her lips from trembling. “Oh, Doctor.” She clutched him to her, kissing his chest and clavicle and throat.

She could feel from him, from her **_tehlnakarn_** , a swirling, warping knot of gratitude, vindication, self-hatred and guilt.

“The Time Lords were a terrible society,” she whispered. “I’m glad they can’t hurt you anymore.”

He nodded, silently.

“The Keeper wants to bring them back.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you alright with that?”

He was silent, his dark eyes burning a path through the TARDIS walls into a past only he could see. It took 5 minutes, 19 seconds before he spoke.

“I”—he paused, swallowed and cleared his throat—“I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and/or Jack (and vice versa).


	39. Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Keeper, Jack and Sarah Jane plan the next step.

Clothed in something besides the red-and-white Andy Pandy overalls he’d suggested—and after multiple (failed) attempts to explain the humor to the Keeper—Sarah Jane Smith was ready to begin as the Lady Inquisitor.

“Do you think we should talk to the Doc now?” Jack asked.

Both Sarah Jane and the Keeper looked to the room where the TARDIS was parked, in eerie synchronicity. Sarah’s hand lifted, making a combing motion, while the Keeper’s eyes just flicked across the space. Her eyes darted to the Keeper. “What is **that**?” she asked, incredulously.

“A Bond,” he replied succinctly.

Sarah’s face stilled. “The Doctor and Rose?”

“Yes,” the Keeper replied, his eyes curious on her.

Had Sarah Jane been in love with the Doctor, just like Rose and Jack himself had been? He guessed she must have, to have that look on her face.

She sighed. “I suppose he was no longer **my** Doctor.”

The Keeper frowned. “Seven bodies ago, my Lady. There is a great deal of mental change over that time.”

“Yes,” she replied. Then she drew in a deep breath and exhaled, dropping her hands down by her sides. “Right! We go speak with the Doctor”— she glanced around—“and then we make decisions about who is next.” She turned to the Keeper. “Personally, I think we ought to ask one of the people the Doctor’s lost over the years.”

“He’s lost everybody,” Jack said.

“No, I mean the people who died while they were travelling with him.” She turned to the Time Lord with them. “You have a list, I am sure, Keeper.”

“I do, Lady Inquisitor,” he replied. “But some will always be lost. We cannot retrieve the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, nor the savage who travelled with the Doctor.”

“Leela,” Sarah Jane added, the name filtering out of her mouth slowly. “Leela of the Sevateem, Andredaselus’ bond mate.”

“Yes.”

“They were both at Arcadia, when it fell.”

“They were,” the Keeper said. “Then the War was locked and none, living or dead, may pass out of it.”

Sarah Jane nodded, frowning. “What others, then?”

“The Space Security agent from his first life. The boy mathematician from his fifth life. The rebellious girl from his seventh life, so long as we are able to keep explosives away from her. Multiple beings from his eighth life.”

“Hmm, yes,” Sarah Jane murmured, “yes, any one of them would do.”

Jack could see the appeal, too. What a way to get the Doc to buy in, beyond Rose and Sarah Jane, by giving him back people who he’d had torn away. But Jack had his own people, too. “What about Ianto?” he asked. “I want to ask Ianto.” In fact, Jack intended to ask Ianto the first chance he got.

“Oh, Captain Harkness,” Sarah Jane said, her eyes lifting to his own, soft and kind. “What a fine idea.” She turned her head. “Keeper, do you see it? It’s beautiful.” She frowned. “And you are very, very unpleasant to be around, Captain. You make me”— she frowned —“I suppose you could say you make my brain **itch**.”

Jack snorted. “You Time Lords are getting used to me. You don’t puke anymore. You just itch.”

“You’ve always been there, Captain,” she replied. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a Time Lord without you. Perhaps that’s the difference.”

“You were born acclimated?”

The Keeper’s eyes had been flitting back and forth between them and his gravelly voice broke in. “Perhaps exposure will be beneficial to ensure all Time Lord senses are engaged from the beginning.”

“Hmmmm.” Both the Keeper and Sarah Jane fell silent, Sarah tapping her fingers on the seam of her trousers. The silence dragged on.

“Ianto,” Jack said, breaking the silence. “Do we need to bother the Doc for him?”

“I suppose not,” Sarah Jane began, then gasped. “Oh, Keeper. Is that—?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Fixed Point, we must ask the Doctor.”

“Or the timeline fails.” Jack didn’t even bother making that a question.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said. “I can see how you want him back.”

“But you have to make sure the timeline survives, yeah, I know,” Jack replied. He shrugged his suspenders back up on his shoulders. “Let’s go interrupt the Doc and Rose. They should be shagged out by now, right?”

Jack wasn’t sure if the Keeper blushed, but Sarah Jane did! Jack considered that a victory condition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	40. He Climbed Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Time Lords weren’t bad people, you know,” he said. “Just—just stuck on what they thought was right. After all, they’d survived it.”

“The Time Lords were a terrible society,” she whispered. “I’m glad they can’t hurt you anymore.”

The Doctor nodded, silently.

“The Keeper wants to bring them back.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you alright with that?”

He was silent, his dark eyes burning a path through the TARDIS walls into a past only he could see. It took 5 minutes, 19 seconds before he spoke.

“I”—he paused, swallowed and cleared his throat—“I don’t know.” He turned his head to meet her eyes. “They weren’t bad people, you know,” he said. “Just—just stuck on what they thought was right. After all, they’d survived it.”

Rose felt her jaw drop a little. The Doctor would hate it but he sounded so much like Keisha, her friend from the estates, who’d taken up with a Jimmy Stone of her own. Only Nat Brown had liked hitting. Oh, it hadn’t started that way, no, first he’d made sure that Keisha didn’t think she was worth much without him. Then he made sure she didn’t go out with the girls anymore. And then he started hitting. And Keisha said the same things the Doctor was saying. But she recognized it. She’d almost fallen into that with Jimmy: first, he got her to walk away from her mum; then he got her to care more about his feelings than her friendships; then he tried hitting her. Keisha didn’t have Jackie Tyler, though, to go home to. And the Doctor hadn’t had anywhere to go, either.

“You survived it, too,” she said, stroking his face.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want little kids to be test cultures until they graduate?”

“NO!” He almost sat up, horror on his face. “Rose—you don’t—please don’t—you’re not thinking that I”—

“No, I don’t,” she interrupted, soothing the lines on his brow, pushing him back down. “You don’t. So why did they? They went through all of it, too.”

“Because the Time Lords were”—he floundered.

—“were?”—

He stared at her, helplessly, silently.

“Were the Time Lords right then, Doctor?” she asked him as quietly and gently as she could, running her fingers through his hair with one hand and laying the other between his hearts. “Were Time Lord kids not people? Or was it just you who wasn’t worth anything?”

She felt, more than heard or sensed, a swiftly rising tangled knot of feelings coming up through him: _: Rage. : Helplessness. : Shame. : Self-loathing. : Disgust. :_ They tumbled over and over again, getting closer and closer to the surface. On his face, she could see his jaw squaring, she could feel his chest hitch, as he fought the physical expression of his feelings. The professor in her head tried to approve of the Doctor fighting his feelings, not letting his emotions out, being all Spock—but she wasn’t having it. Before the Keeper brought back the Time Lords, the Doctor had to decide whether he wanted them back or not. And that meant dealing with a whole alien race of Nat Browns and Jimmy Stones.

Plus, if she and the Doctor ever had kids, this was not gonna happen to them. Her mum would come back from the dead—come back from being dead in another universe!—just to kick her arse if she let that happen. Jackie Tyler had been an overprotective pain sometimes, but she wouldn’t let anybody do that to a kid. Alien or human or whatever. And if her mum had ever found out how the Doctor had been treated when he was a kid, she would have smacked the Time Lords from Earth to Raxacoricofallapatorius and back again.

She loved him and she was furious with the Time Lords for hurting him. And if the Keeper was someone who had made her Doctor feel like he was anything other than a person…? The Keeper was going to get Rose Tyler boot in Time Lord arse. Because the Doctor was amazing. He was kind—and he’d come from people who didn’t know kindness. He was funny—and he’d come from people who didn’t have a sense of humor. He was justice-minded—and he’d come from people who made injustice part of the way they looked at everyone and everything that wasn’t them. He’d pulled himself up out of that and decided that his people were wrong, and he had to fix that. Oh, how she loved him!

The Doctor was looking up at her wide-eyed. Fine wet trails flowed backward from the corners of his eyes to his sideburns and he was crushing the hand she’d had on his chest in his grip. “Rose, I’m not”—he started to whisper.

—“You are,” she broke in, whispering back. “They were wrong. They were sick, they were broken and they were wrong. You are worth every good thing.”

He pulled her to him, clutching his hands against her body. “How long”— his voice wobbled, a bit breathy —“how long are you gonna stay with me?”

She felt the shaking in his arms and the wetness on his cheekbone against her own. “Forever,” she murmured in his ear. “Your forever.” And she gathered up her love, and her anger at the Time Lords for what they did to him, and her determination to never let him hurt again, and she put it in a mental hand and pressed those feelings against the Doctor kernel inside her head.

And she pulled him to his side, letting him curl up into her, as the storm broke out of him, wetly, messily, and he held onto her for dear life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Ten and Rose will be followed by Sarah Jane and/or Jack (and vice versa).


	41. UnCollared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Sarah Jane try to explain the Doctor's Type 40 TARDIS to the Keeper.

_“I’m sorry, Jack,” Sarah Jane said. “I can see how you want your Ianto back.”_

_“But you have to make sure the timeline survives, yeah, I know,” Jack replied. He shrugged his suspenders back up on his shoulders. “Let’s go interrupt the Doc and Rose. They should be shagged out by now, right?”_

_Jack wasn’t sure if the Keeper blushed, but Sarah Jane did! Jack considered that a victory condition._

Jack noticed Sarah Jane glancing over at the Keeper as they slowly made their way to where the Doctor had parked the TARDIS. He couldn’t read her face, but there was something going on behind those eyes.

The Keeper noticed, too. “Yes, Lady Inquisitor?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

“I don’t believe you should go inside the Doctor’s TARDIS.”

“My Lady?”

“The TARDIS is”—

—“a TT Type 40, Mark 3, which had long been out of commission before the Time War,” the Keeper finished.

Jack snorted.

Sarah Jane glared at him and turned back to the Keeper. “I was going to say that the Doctor’s TARDIS is… particular. She’s very sensitive about who she allows to wander about in her halls.”

“She? It is a TARDIS, and will obey a Time Lord.”

Jack tried to keep his snicker to himself. Two Time Lord frowns indicated that he hadn’t succeeded. “Keeper, trust her on this one. This TARDIS is different. It’s sentient.”

The Keeper shook his head. “They were all sentient,” he huffed, “and they were all Collared to obey Time Lords.”

Jack felt a cold wave rush down his spine. “Collared?”

The Keeper raised his brows. “Do you think, Fixed Point, that we would allow multi-dimensional sentient creatures from Gallifrey to go wandering about in the vortex without some kind of control? We would never be so foolish.”

Sarah Jane put a small hand on Jack’s bicep as he almost lunged forward. “Keeper,” she said, coolly, “I suspect the Doctor removed the Collar long ago. His TARDIS has, for many years, ignored his settings and struck her own course through time and space.”

The Keeper looked appalled. “That’s—that’s—that’s preposterous!” he spluttered. “How foolish that boy is, allowing for a disobedient TARDIS!”

Jack and Sarah Jane exchanged glances. Jack said, “That’s part of why your Lady President wanted the Doctor to lead the Time Lords, wasn’t it? Because he liked people—as well as TARDISes—to make their own choices and to think on their own.”

The Keeper still looked perplexed, shaking his head, white wisps of hair floating around like a sun’s corona. “It makes no sense,” he said. “TARDISes obey. They obey Time Lords and serve them.”

Sarah Jane replied, “The Doctor has always sought help, not obedience, and friends, not servants.”

“Even from his TARDIS?!” the Keeper’s voice ranged high in exasperation and doubt.

“Especially from his TARDIS.”

The Doctor’s voice came from the doors of the blue Police Box, Rose Tyler standing just behind him, their hands gripped together, fingers interwoven. “She’s my oldest friend, now that the Koschei is dead.” The Doctor’s brows went down. “But Time Lords never understood friendship—just alliance and servitude.” He frowned. “My TARDIS has been unCollared since my Third incarnation. She and I were prisoners together on Earth. When I became free again, how could I leave her chained?”

Jack saw Rose briefly press her cheekbone to the Doctor’s shoulder, and squeeze his hand tightly. The Doctor’s hand squeezed back. Jack felt stinging in his eyes, seeing them together again, at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will alternate. Sarah Jane and/or Jack will be followed by Ten and Rose (and vice versa).


	42. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Love’s probably too scary for Time Lords,” Rose said, frankly. “I don’t think your people were very brave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay. Due to real life incidences both private (new responsibilities at the non-profit I work with) and public (the Umpqua college incident), I have to drop my posting schedule to every other week at most. Possibly even less. I am very sorry but I just don't have enough time to make this weekly anymore.

_He pulled her to him, clutching his hands against her body. “How long”— his voice wobbled, a bit breathy —“how long are you gonna stay with me?”_

_She felt the shaking in his arms and the wetness on his cheekbone against her own. “Forever,” she murmured in his ear. “Your forever.” And she gathered up her love, and her anger at the Time Lords for what they did to him, and her determination to never let him hurt again, and she put it in a mental hand and pressed those feelings against the Doctor kernel inside her head._

_And she pulled him to his side, letting him curl up into her, as the storm broke out of him, wetly, messily, and he held onto her for dear life._

Eventually, the Doctor’s breath quieted and he lay with his head tucked against Rose’s breasts as she ran her fingers through his hair, back and forth, like the swing at the local playground near the Estates: front and back, back and forth, slow and steady. She loved the feel of his hair, soft to touch, yet springy. And she kept her mental hand pressed against the him inside her head, letting him feel her there. The little fluctuations in her attention, from the scent of him rising to her nostrils, to the texture of his hair, to the soft susurration of his breath against her skin, to the peace she felt in his presence, to the love she wished she could just pour out over him again and again.

He lifted his face at that and stared at her. “Why?” Not frightened. Not angry. He pushed her hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “How can you?” He sounded so honestly, exhaustedly puzzled it brought tears to her eyes.

“Because you’re loveable,” she replied. And his eyes changed, she’d swear they did. All that weariness, all that responsibility, all that _age_ seemed to melt away. There was something very—young, she supposed—in his eyes.

“But…”

“But?”

“Nobody’s done that before.”

“It’s probably too scary for Time Lords,” she said, frankly. “I don’t think your people were very brave.”

He snorted.

“Loving somebody is scary,” she added, running her fingers across his sideburn. “But worth it. When it hurts, and sometimes it does, it doesn’t seem like it. But it is. It’s totally worth it. I learned that from Mum. Everybody’s worth loving, even when they’re hard to love. And some people are hard to love. When I ran off with Jimmy” —she felt her own embarrassment and shame, still—“I was really hard for my mum to love. I said so many things that I wish I’d never said. But I did say them. And they were true then, too. But Mum loved me, anyway.”

“The one and only Jackie Tyler.” He wriggled about until he was holding her hands in each of his own, fingers interlaced, one crunched up between them, one loosely propped up on their hips.

“Yeah. You said all those things about Mum” —

—“she slapped me!” —

—“What? She nev—oh, right. This version of my mum did slap this version of you.” Rose pulled her head back a little. “I keep forgetting, you know.”

“That we’re not quite the same people we remember?”

“Yeah.” She tightened her grip on his left hand. “You look the same. You hold my hand the same way. You stand the same. You even stop breathing the same.”

“Same man.”

“Different memories, though.” She sighed. “You once said that a Time Lord was made up of everything he remembered, more than other people are. So this you is different from the this you I remember.” She saw something change in his face, in the way he set his shoulders. “It’s like regeneration, I guess, which makes me lucky. You’re still you. But you’re different.” And he relaxed again. Weird. “But I’m so different than the Rose you knew,” she added, looking down at his chest. “I’m not even the same species.”

The Doctor let go of the hand they rested on their hips and used his fingers to lift her chin and meet her gaze. He smiled a little, the crinkles around his eyes appearing briefly. “You’re right—it is a lot like regeneration. Differences to explore. But you, Rose Tyler” —and he said her name with a relish that made her stomach swoop—“are still the same inside. He bopped her nose with his finger and added, “In your own, terribly wise words, you are still you. Rose Marion Tyler”—he stopped suddenly—“that is, your middle name still is Marion, right?”

She giggled. “Yeah.”

He rolled off the bed. Yeah, still the Doctor, Rose thought affectionately. Still had the attention span of a 6-year-old.

“Oi!”

Rose realized she still had her mental hand pressed against the Doctor inside her head. She yanked it away, horrified. He turned back, face white. “Rose?”

“I’m so sorry. I forgot I was doing that.” Inside her head, she could just hear her first Doctor’s voice: _Stupid ape._

“No, Rose, no, it’s alright” —he dropped back on the bed, scrambling to her over the duvet and sheets—“it’s alright.” He gathered her into his arms. “It’s alright. It’s alright.”

“I feel so stupid.”

“You’ve never been stupid.”

“I got you killed when I saved my dad.”

“That wasn’t stupidity. That was me, not telling you what could go wrong when you interfere with your own past. Time travel 101 and I didn’t tell you.”

“If I wasn’t stupid, I would have known that without you having to tell me.”

The Doctor's jaw dropped open. He shook his head and then tilted it. “Right. It’s only fair,” he muttered. And Rose felt… something inside her head. Not like that dictionary-encyclopedia-professor in her head that had all the facts and figures. But something warm. And wild. And big. And exhilarating. Like cuddling up against a jaguar hunting in a tree. Like being in the middle of a tropical storm. Hanging onto a mammoth in full run. And she suddenly felt things. So many different things, all mingled, with undercurrents of others mixed in.

Pride! (with amazement). Affection! (with contentment). Desire! (with embarrassment). Awe! (with uncertainty). Longing! (with hope). And love. So much love. Waves of it, pouring over her from the inside. It made Rose realize that he must have his mental hand on the piece of her that was in his head, like she’d had inside her own head. This is what that felt like? She felt her eyes tear up and she cautiously put her mental hand back on the Doctorness in her head. And loved him back.

Colors swirled across her brain. And then blackness.


	43. Archivist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choosing the next Time Lord candidate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience. My posting shall still be erratic, I'm afraid. But it was lovely to escape into the Doctor's world for a bit, to write.

_Sarah Jane replied, “The Doctor has always sought help, not obedience, and friends, not servants.”_

_“Even from his TARDIS?!” the Keeper’s voice ranged high in exasperation and doubt._

_“Especially from his TARDIS.”_

_The Doctor’s voice came from the doors of the blue Police Box, Rose Tyler standing just behind him, hands together, fingers interwoven. “She’s my oldest friend, now that the Koschei is dead.” The Doctor’s brows went down. “But Time Lords never understood friendship—just alliance and servitude.” He frowned. “My TARDIS has been unCollared since my Third incarnation. She and I were prisoners together on Earth. When I became free again, how could I leave her chained?”_

_Jack saw Rose briefly press her cheekbone to the Doctor’s shoulder, and squeeze his hand tightly. The Doctor’s hand squeezed back. Jack felt stinging in his eyes, seeing them together again, at last._

“Hey, Doc,” Jack said, easily. “Hey, Rosie.” He grinned at them. “How was the sex?”

The Doctor glared at him and Rose blushed.

“So, Rosie, does the Doc know what he’s doing, or did you have to educate him?” The Doctor’s expression got even darker while the woman herself reached over and smacked Jack’s arm.

“Bugger off, Jack,” she said.

“I’d love to,” he replied. “You offering?” Rosie’s jaw dropped and her eyes got wide before she burst out laughing. “Bring the Time Lord, too,” Jack continued, waggling his eyebrows.

“Which one, Jack?” she asked. “There’s so many of us to choose from.” With her comment, the Doctor’s face brightened and his grip on Rosie’s hand seemed to tighten. Good for them.

“That’s actually why we’re here,” Sarah Jane said, breaking into their banter.

Rosie’s face sobered as she turned to the rest of their little party. “Sarah Jane?” she asked, letting go of the Doctor’s hand and reaching out to the other woman. They enfolded each other in a hug, then backed away. “You’re a Time Lord, like me?”

“We’re both Time Ladies, as I believe the proper label goes,” Sarah Jane replied with a warm smile. “What is your Archetype?”

“Loomer, I think.”

Sarah Jane’s eyebrows rose and her lips turned up in a smile. “Oh, excellent!” She grasped Rose’s hand, enthusiastically. “Your expertise will be needed, for we have come to ask the Doctor about another candidate.”

“Oh?” Rosie’s gaze turned back to the Doctor, whose face had gone rigid.

“Yes, a Mr. Ianto Jones of Cardiff.”

Sarah Jane saying Yan’s name so dispassionately, so clinically, made Jack wince. Rosie’s eyes turned to him, soft and pained.

“Your Ianto, Jack?”

Jack swallowed and nodded. She turned to the Time Lord who held all the power.

“Doctor?” Rosie asked.

Jack waited, watching the Time Lord who had let Rosie save him, who had helped change him from a selfish coward to something better, and waited for the mad man with the blue box to decide his fate. The TARDIS hummed in the background of his mind as the Doctor opened his mouth to speak.

“Yes,” the Doctor breathed, his eyes flicking over to Rosie, and back to Jack.

Rosie placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “But let someone else offer it, Jack. It’s hard, switching species like this.” Sarah Jane nodded alongside her. “There’s so much you don’t know you don’t know.” Rosie reached out to grasp the Doctor’s hand, pulling him toward her. “Don’t make your Ianto to say ‘Yes’ because you’re asking and you need him.”

“But”—

—“Whoever it is will let your Ianto know that part of the benefits are that you are here, and that you still love him and that you two could have so much more time together.” Rosie’s eyes were dark, and she seemed infinitely wiser than she’d ever been before. “The problem is, if he loves you, he would try to do it because of that—not because he’s suited to being a Time Lord. And he might not, Jack.”

Jack swallowed.

“I had Eldrad in my head, and he was near-immortal,” Sarah Jane added. The Doctor’s eyes flicked over to her, before returning to look at Jack. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe, when you have so much more time than you’re used to thinking you have.” She tipped her head to one side. “Didn’t you notice it yourself, as you came to terms with your inability to die?”

Jack had. Especially after getting confirmation from the Doc that he wasn’t going to die. It changed everything. He shut his eyes and nodded.

Sarah Jane continued. “Now, the Keeper thinks your Mr. Jones would be an ideal match for Archivist.”

Jack opened his eyes and looked at the Keeper. The old fellow nodded, uncharacteristically quiet. There must be some kind of timeline thing happening around them right now, for him to be so silent.

“Let me go and ask him, for you,” Sarah Jane said. “As a way to return the favor you did me, by asking me.”

Jack looked down at her, tiny slip of a woman, then over at Rosie and the Doc, and finally at the Keeper, who seemed to be holding his breath.

“If the Doc says that’s okay.”

A faint smile lifted the corner of the Doctor’s lips. “Go, Sarah.”

Jack sagged in relief.


	44. Poetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and the Doctor explore her brain a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay:  
> Life simply got in the way.  
> I've returned to this tale,  
> Hoping it's not gone stale.  
> See you once a fortnight!

_The Doctor tilted his head. “Right. It’s only fair,” he muttered. And Rose felt… something inside her head. Not like that dictionary-encyclopedia-professor in her head that had all the facts and figures. But something warm. And wild. And big. Like cuddling up against a jaguar in a tree. Like being in the middle of a tropical storm. And she suddenly felt things. So many different things, all mingled, with undercurrents of others mixed in._

_Pride!_ (with amazement). _Affection!_ (with contentment). _Desire!_ (with embarrassment). _Awe!_ (with uncertainty). _Longing!_ (with hope). _And love. So much love. Waves of it. It made Rose realize that he must have his mental hand on the piece of her that was in his head, like she’d had inside her own head. This is what that felt like? She felt her eyes tear up and she cautiously put her mental hand back on the Doctorness in her head. And loved him back._

_Colors swirled across her brain. And then blackness._

Rose was awake. And that was different. Usually when she woke up, it was a long, lazy process. It might have been because someone was stroking her face. Her eyes opened and immediately focused on the Doctor’s face above hers.

“Oh, good,” he said, a smile lightening his face. “I was starting to get concerned.”

The hum of machinery and the particular tone of light let her know she was in the infirmary. “What?” she asked, sitting up.

The Doctor gripped her hand and helped her to sit, and then to stand. “There it is. Superior physiology!” he said, grinning. “And up you are!”

“What happened?”

He had the grace to look a little abashed. “A bit too much sensation for your newly regenerated brain,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

She could feel the pulse of faint embarrassment in her head. “Trying to run before I’m crawling?” she asked, smiling up at him.

“Something like that.” A whisper of pride floated through her. It wasn’t her own.

Rose took stock of herself. Everything physical seemed to be alright. Two hearts, beating away with blood mostly orange-red; four kidneys, with something approximating adrenal glands to them; one head; two hands, and so forth. Wait, what? “Two hearts, indifferent red?”

His head tilted. “Oh, you brilliant creature!” he said. “They gave you Shakespeare and you’re already using it!” He picked her up and swung her around in a joyous hug, then stopped suddenly. He frowned and put her down. “They gave you Shakespeare?” That frowny line appeared between his brows. “That’s not like them at all. I can see them giving you the collected works of Faldrazutrelsorsoreni“—

—“they did”—

—“but not Shakespea—they did?”

“Yeah.

 _‘The line drifts-in-possibility_  
_tangling in ordered knots-as-nexus_  
 _I-as-Fourth-One-Bound weave-dance among_  
 _and smooth the many ways...’_

she recited.

He grinned. “Good old Faldra,” he said. “Never worried about having an exciting moment with her stuff.”

Rose frowned. “I like it, actually,” she countered. “Now, Androthenellikast? His stuff’s dull.” She saw the Doctor’s mouth open in objection. The professor in her head noted that Androthenellikast was known to be the Doctor’s favorite writer, and that he’d written a rather well-received (though unevenly argued) dissertation on the topic in his 40th year in the Academy. Rose didn’t care. Androthenellikast’s stuff was just so stiff…

“Oi!”

She laughed. They had all the time in the universe to argue the relative merits of Gallifreyan poetry. When they weren’t running for their lives, anyway. Perhaps someone else would write new Gallifreyan poetry. Rose looked up at the Doctor. “It’s time,” she said.

He sighed.

“I know you don’t like to face the music, but…”

“Sooner started, sooner done.”

“Sooner traveling by TARDIS, to an alien sun.”

He grinned. “Oh, Rose Tyler—nicely done!”

“Did you just—?”

“Maaaaaaybe.”

“All right then. No more rhyming. And I mean it!”

They walked down the corridor. She could feel the mischief rising in him.

“Anybody want a peanut?”

She chased him into the console room.


	45. Askings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane goes off to ask a question.  
> Rose has one to ask, too.

With the press of a button on the Keeper’s console, Sarah Jane blinked out. Jack had just inhaled to ask how long this would take when she blinked back, dusty and tired.

“Inquisitor?” the Keeper asked. Jack reached into the pocket of his great coat and handed Sarah Jane a flask. She coughed and sipped and coughed again.

She looked up at Jack. “You and your people were doing a lot of good work out in Cardiff,” she said. “That creature—Abaddon—set every sense I have absolutely mad. I barely got to your Mr. Jones at all.”

Jack swallowed. “You talked to Yan?”

“Yes. I told him. I’m not certain how much he understood,” she said. “We were doing quite a lot of running and dodging. Almost like travelling with the Doctor, frankly.” She frowned. “That was quite foolish of you to attempt to fight the creature using your life force. Impressive,” she added, “but foolish. What if you’d been wrong?”

Jack started to smile. “But I wasn’t.”

“But what if you had been?”

“The Doc told me once that there is a death waiting for me. And that death is a fixed point, which is why I can’t die until then. Even Abaddon couldn’t undo that.”

“Time can be changed, Captain Harkness,” she admonished him.

“It’s a fixed point.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t challenge it with such—such—”

—“derring do?” Jack answered with a grin.

She smiled a little at him, then grew serious again. “Such callousness about your own life.” She grasped his hand briefly. “You are a good man, Captain, even if you are a little too fresh for my comfort. Your life is not something to throw away.”

Jack pulled his hand from hers and turned his face away. Sarah Jane moved to stand in front of where he was now looking, reached up and gripped his jaw in her surprisingly strong little hand. “You are a good man,” she said, tugging on his jaw with every word, as emphasis. “You. Are. A. Good. Man.” Jack willed the tears to stay down. She let go of his jaw and turned to the Keeper, holding out her wrist where the Time Ring curled. “Keeper, send me back to speak to him again.”

“Wait!”

“Captain?” she asked.

“You weren’t there, when Yan died. You can’t go back right before…”

“As close as I can, temporally. Just as you did with me,” she assured him. “There was only a week between when you came for tea and when I... died.” Her voice trailed off a bit. “But I protected Luke and Skye, and that’s what mattered,” she concluded, briskness back in her voice. She patted Jack’s sleeve. “Keeper, send me where I need to go.”

“Yes, Inquisitor.” A few movements of the Keeper’s hands and Sarah Jane was gone again.

Jack held his breath.

————————————————

Rose sat on one of the steps within the Stasis Chamber, watching the low-voiced discussion between Jack, Sarah Jane and the Keeper. The Doctor was frowning down at one of the pods in the movable racks which lined the walls and heights of the chamber.

She walked over to see what had drawn his attention. It was curiously blank, different than any of the other pods. There was no projection screen showing one of the Doctor’s friends, no colorful shell, no specialty designation. Just a smooth, gripless surface, in featureless grey.

“What’s this one all about?” she asked, reaching for his hand. A maelstrom of thoughts and feelings buffeted her from the inside:

Terror _(hope)_. Longing _(self-loathing)_. Despair _(anticipation)_. Weariness _(desire)_.   
Love. Love. Love.   
Love _(doubt)_.

Rose sighed and leaned her head on the Doctor’s pinstriped shoulder, squeezing his hand. “Hey,” she said, looking up at him. He tilted his head her way, finally. “What’s this one about,” she asked, “all plain and unassigned like this?”

The Doctor’s hand reached toward it, then dropped back to his side. “The Keeper says it’s mine.”

Rose lifted her head and gaped at him, disbelief and hope soaring side by side in her throat. She tried to swallow the disbelief down, so only the hope had room. “Yours?” she asked.

He nodded. “The grey indicates it’s for the Renegade Archetype.”

“Like you, Prydonian Renegade,” she smirked.

“What?” he turned to look her in the face. “What!?”

Startled, she asked back, “What?”

“How can you—?” He growled under his breath. “Damn you, Romana.”


	46. Ianto’s Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane Smith has a cup of tea with Ianto Jones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience. I hope to get back to a once-a-month posting schedule.

“Miss Smith?”

“Mr. Jones.”

“I’m going to die soon, then.” He offered her a cup from the galley in the Hub, which she accepted with a smile. Rooibos with cardamom, of course.

“This is the closest I can get. Captain Harkness says I was not there.”

“Jack is with me wh”— Ianto Jones swallowed. “How long?”

“I cannot tell you when you die. That is one of the things no one should know.”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “How long has it been for Jack since”— His throat closed and he couldn't squeeze more words out.

“Since he lost you?” she asked, a gentle hand on his elbow.

“Yes.”

She seemed to raise her hand and comb the air before answering the Welshman. “A billion light years.”

“He can travel that with the Doctor.”

“He has traveled that without the Doctor.”

Ianto felt the cold stab through his body. Jack needed people like plants needed the sun. “He shouldn’t be alone. He gets killed more when he’s alone.”

“He’s asking you to not let him be alone.”

“Everything ends.”

“Even a Time Lord’s life ends, of course,” she replied.

“Jack’s never will.”

“ ** _That_** , I can tell you,” Miss Smith said tartly, “is **_not_** so.” She set her cup down on the table. “Your Captain does have a death waiting for him, in time.”

“How long until Jack can rest?”

She paused, her eyes flicking back and forth like a typewriter carriage, before she drew in a breath and replied. “Millions of years.”

“Do you believe in God, Miss Smith?”

“After all those years of seeing aliens telling me they are gods—of Earth or elsewhere—I confess my childhood faith has been quite upended.” She pursed her lips. “But then, all that experience with telepathic and psychometric abilities has also shown me that what we expend, in kindness or in cruelty, leaves an imprint behind. It is not only in the hearts of our families and friends, but also often a literal imprint on the world—an echo of our strongest and most oft-repeated feelings. It is up to us to make that a heaven for those who follow us,” she added, “rather than a hell.” She shrugged. “At least, that is how I believe. What of yourself?”

“Can you tell me how **_he_** dies?” Ianto looked down on his hands, discovering how tightly they were clenching his cup.

“He saves a world,” she said. “With a cat. A nun.”

Ianto felt the humor fill him and curve his lips. _Jack saves the world with a cat and a nun._ “Sounds like one of his stories—if Jack managed to be naked by the end.”

Miss Smith blushed, but persevered. “Have you thought on the Doctor’s question, Mr. Jones?”

“You mean Jack’s question.”

“I mean both.”

He looked at her face. There was a timelessness about her face, much like Jack’s, a sense of not stasis but perhaps abeyance, of a film being played in slow motion. “How long is a Time Lord’s life?”

“On Gallifrey, without physical stress or danger and with Gallifreyan medical science… one regeneration can last five thousand years,” she answered him.

“How long total?”

“Over sixty thousand Earth years.”

“I wouldn’t get to heaven for sixty thousand years?”

“You’re a theist, Mr. Jones?”

It was his turn to shrug. “After all I’ve experienced, it hardly seems likely, does it?” He refilled his cup. “And yet…” he couldn’t quite find the right words. "My parents. Lisa. Owen and Tosh. Sixty thousand years."

Her head jerked up and she stared at the door. After a moment, Ianto could feel the rumble through the soles of his shoes as the lift started down. They had run out of time.

“You have to go, Miss Smith.”

“What do you say, Mr. Jones?”

He drew in a breath. “Tell Jack I”—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never watched Torchwood, except for fragmentary videos on YouTube and the Doctor Who wiki. I have tried to "catch" the character of Ianto Jones in my writing, and apologize for any inaccuracies of characterization.  
> 108/271/50


	47. Denouement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane hadn’t known what the moment of denouement would look like, but she hadn’t expected this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with the new once-a-month schedule!

_“You have to go, Miss Smith.”_

_“What do you say, Mr. Jones?”_

_He drew in a breath. “Tell Jack I”—_

—“am sorry. I cannot,” Sarah Jane repeated, placing a small hand on Jack’s forearm. “He regretted causing you pain. He was going to say more, but I had to go. You were coming down the lift.”

“Damn it all to fucking hell!” Jack yelled, shrugging off her hand and pivoting on his heel to the doorway. Rose caught her breath. _Oh, Jack._ He slammed his fist into the wall with a dull clanging thud. “Damn it, Yan! Damn you.” His voice thickened. “Damn you. Why are you leaving me all alone?”

“Captain Harkness, I”—

“Don’t.”

“I beg pardon?”

“Just… don’t.” Rose began to move toward Jack but the Doctor curled his arm tighter around her. Glancing up, she saw him shake his head. A roil of emotions came to her over the bond: _Sympathy. Grief. Guilt._ His eyes flicked down to her. _Gratitude._

The Keeper pressed buttons on the control panel of the Archivist’s pod. The young man’s face disappeared, leaving only the dark-haired woman’s behind. “I suspected as much, Fixe” —

“Shut your mouth,” Jack bellowed, spinning around to glare at the Keeper. “Shut your lying, condescending mouth, Time Lord, or I’ll fucking shut it for you!”

The air seemed to crystallize.

Rose felt the Doctor stiffen beside her, his arm dropping away. He drew a long hissing breath and asked, with cold deliberation, “What?”

“Tell the fucking Time Lord to shu”— suddenly Jack seemed to realize what he’d said.

The Doctor’s eyes shifted to the Keeper. Rose could feel his mind buzzing around the edges of hers before it seemed to disappear. The sudden cutoff stabbed through her left eye, leaving torn edges behind. She whimpered and clutched at her head.

The Doctor didn’t notice. _Or didn’t care,_ a part of her brain whispered. He stalked over to the Keeper, who was backing away until pressed against a capsule. “You call him a fixed point. Only a time-sensitive species would notice that,” he muttered, his voice slowly rising in volume through his declaration. “I thought you were from Karn, perhaps, some servant of Romana’s fulfilling her last request”—

—“Indeed, I”—

The Doctor’s voice continued right over the Keeper’s faint protest. —“but no, you’re one of **_my_** people. One of the worst species in the history of the universe. One of the most selfish, arrogant, bullying, condescending, self-“— He cut himself off. “Who are you,” he hissed, looking the Keeper in the face. “Which one of yo”— His jaw tightened, nostrils flaring, as contempt rolled off of him in waves.

“Borusa.”

————————————————

Sarah Jane hadn’t known what the moment of denouement would look like, but she hadn’t expected it to result in the Doctor’s thin frame looming over the frail Keeper while Rose fell to her knees clutching her head.

“Borusa,” the Doctor said. Sarah Jane had never heard such contempt—no, call it what it was. Hatred. She had never heard the Doctor’s voice filled with such _hatred_ before. It made some part of herself curl away in horror and disappointment that the Doctor would be so…. Her brain tripped over itself trying to find the right word, like it did when she was writing; Ordinary. Typical. Tarnished. Only human. _“Feet of clay, boy, feet of clay,”_ a voice rumbled through her memory. Yes, the shining image of the Doctor in her mind had been of someone above petty human emotion and action. But here he was. Only human, after all.

“Here you are, Borusa,” the Doctor snarled. “Losing the Game of Rassilon wasn’t enough for you? You had to come back and manipulate everything to get your way? Didn’t they send you off to die somewhere?” His hand snaked out and seized the crystal ring on the Keeper’s hand, dragging the old creature’s arm along with. “Still hanging on to some treasured memories?” The Doctor looked ready to strike the Keeper when he answered—or if he didn’t.

“Doctor,” Sarah Jane called. He didn’t seem to hear. “Time Lord.”

Ah, that made his head swing around. She almost quailed before the pit of rage in his eyes. No, she was Sarah Jane Smith and she’d faced down far worse beings than this. Her voice snapped out, like she was reprimanding her son Luke.

“Look to your **_tehlsohka_**.”

The Doctor blinked at her, then his gaze shifted to Rose’s form on the floor, her hands clutched in her hair. The flat line of his mouth softened and the rage drained from his entire frame. With a contemptuous glance back at the Keeper, he flung the old hand away and strode back to Rose, kneeling beside her and touching her shoulder. The girl took a shuddering breath and dropped a hand from her head to lay over his. Sarah Jane could feel the density of their bond from where she stood. He murmured something low and kissed the girl’s temple.

They rose together, hands interlaced.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who have enjoyed the prose novels and Big Finish audio tales, please be aware that I am ignoring a majority of them for my version of the Time War and Borusa's part in it.


	48. Behind the Facts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Jane wondered.... what was Borusa, to the Doctor?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
> kletlohn (KLEET-lohn)
> 
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
> hekal (heh-KAHL)  
> kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
> katherikon (keh-THAIR-ih-ken) [the "voiced" TH of There/That/They]  
> latara (lah-TAR-ah)  
> shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
> tehlsohka (tayl-SO-kah)  
> tehlnakarn (TAYLN-ah-karn)  
> tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
> temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

After an eternity of pain—how could it last so long?—Rose felt the Doctor’s mind rising up around the edges of her own. His presence seemed to flow up around the torn edges that pulsed behind her left eye, in slow smoothing strokes, cool and calming, like a cat washing a sore paw. His hand touched her shoulder and she felt like she could breathe again, that air was finally reaching her lungs, and she reached across her chest to touch his hand. Their bond flared again at the touch of skin to skin, filling up the jagged space and seeming to sink even deeper into her bones. The relief from pain made her giddy.

 ** _“Tehlsohka, kletlohn_**.”

 _(She-who-is-mine-alone,_ her brain translated for her. _Forgive me-who-is-lower-in-status-than-you.)_

Rose reached out to interlace her fingers with the Doctor’s, in that grip they both found so rooted in their connection. They stood to rise together and the Doctor swiveled to face the Keeper, rage still burbling up inside him. She could feel the echoes across the back of her mind.

“Doctor?” she asked in a low voice. He didn’t seem to hear her, his mouth moving soundlessly as he struggled with his rage. She squeezed his hand and tried again. **_“Tehlnekarn?”_**

His head jerked toward her and a whole different set of emotions rushed past her. Fragmentary bits flooding her mindscape. They weren’t her own feelings, that much she knew. _: :Shock. Gratitude. Embarrassment. Lust.: :_ … and something Rose would just have to sum up as _Do That Again._ The idea made her lips curve upward. She’d remember to do that again. As much as possible. She looked up at him, caressed the kernel of him that was inside her own head, and asked in the gentlest way she could,  “Who is he? To you?”

————————————————

Sarah Jane had a lifetime’s worth—multiple lifetime’s worth, in fact—of data about Borusa. As a public figure, his presence couldn’t be erased completely; he was too bound up in things that happened on Gallifrey for multiple regenerations. But the information behind the data, the kind of information she’d spent her professional life obtaining? That was where the gaps were.

And Sarah Jane Smith hated gaps like that.

What was Borusa to the Doctor? Her internal database, like some combination of K9 and Mr. Smith, could only tell her so much:

_Tutor._

_Instructor on mind-shielding._

_Head of Inquiry to the Doctor’s expulsion from the Academy of the Time Lords._

_Lord Chancellor of Gallifrey during the Vardan and Sontaran invasions._

_Lord President of Gallifrey during the Omega episode._

And, of course, the Borusa Incident itself, used as a horror story to generations of Time Lords and Gallifreyans, to show how even the wisest and best may fall. The Borusa Incident, with the travels through the Death Zone and the Tomb of Rassilon, was the only one within her own memories, not the Time Lord information her brain had been supplied with.

But what was Borusa, behind the facts?

The Doctor was eyeing the Keeper with a weary, jaundiced expression. “He was my first tutor at the Academy. There was a group of us—Koschei, Ushas, Magnus, Drax and all the rest. He specifically taught mind-shielding and other telepathic skills.” His voice was redolent with memories, that peculiar nostalgia for old pain that she remembered from years of talking to Blitz survivors. He trailed off.

Rose, bless her, was holding both of the Doctor’s hands in her own. Their bond seemed to pulse against Sarah Jane’s own shields. “And?” she asked.

“He was under pressure to expel me from the Academy and he refused. He saved my life when the Master and Chancellor Goth framed me for killing the President.” The Doctor’s mouth turned down and he shot the Keeper a dark look. “Then he lied to the rest of Gallifrey that Goth was a hero, not an ambitious, power-hungry fool. I should have taken that as a warning.”

“A warning?” Rose asked.

“The Borusa Incident,” Sarah Jane found herself saying.

A little moue of confusion appeared on Rose’s face, then suddenly cleared, and she looked at the Keeper with what Sarah Jane would consider horror. “You tried to kill him? Kill the Doctor? To be Lord President Eternal?”

Surprise lit the Doctor’s face. “You know about that?” he asked. “It wasn’t hushed up?”

“President Rodan was to thank for that,” Rose replied.

“Rodan would abide no cover-ups when it came to her fellow Time Lords,” Sarah Jane added. “Pity she was never elected to a second term.”

A low, bitter laugh escaped the Doctor’s throat. “It’s probably the only thing that let her escape with her life and her regenerations intact,” he said, upper lip curling. “Assuming she did so.”

“She did,” Rose and Sarah Jane said simultaneously, then exchanged amused looks. The Doctor cast a cursory eye over them, then turned back to the Keeper.

“But here you are, Borusa, still wearing Rassilon’s old ring. Such sentimentality isn’t you,” the Doctor said.

“It is a reminder, Doctor,” the Keeper replied.

“A reminder? The only reminder you need is that you’re supposed to be dead,” the Doctor snarled back. “Like everyone I’ve ever cared about. Rassilon sent you off to Arcadia with the rest of the expendables: Leela, Andred, Susan, Braxiatel, even Narvin, that old goat. Romana herself.”

“The Lady President”— the Keeper began.

—“yes, Romana. She had a name you know,” the Doctor barreled right over the other Time Lord’s words. “Romanavoratrelundar of Heartshaven. You should say it some time.”

—“she asked me to be Keeper here. To do the work she could not.”

The idea stopped up the Doctor’s mouth. He fell silent.

180/306/60/8551


	49. A Fine Tribute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is that why I’m here? As some kind of hold on you?” Rose bit her lower lip.  
> The Doctor gripped her hand between both of his. “No, Rose, no. They might have chosen to retrieve you first—everything else was our choice. You and me. Shiver and Shake. Sapphire and Steel. Finn and Jake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
> arok (AIR-uk)  
> filakha (fih-LAHK-ah)  
> hekal (heh-KAHL)  
> kamdarak (KAM-dar-ak)  
> katherikon (keh-THAIR-ih-ken) [the "voiced" TH of There/That/They]  
> kletlohn (KLEET-lohn)  
> latara (lah-TAR-ah)  
> shakaral (shak-uh-RAWL)  
> tehlsohka (tayl-SO-kah)  
> tehlnakarn (TAYLN-ah-karn)  
> tekhu (TEKK-hoo)  
> temekarn (TEM-eh-karn)

“She didn’t ask you!” Rose said. “You volunteered!”

Jack snorted. “And a fine tribute he is.” Rose sent him an irritated look that made him decide reticence was the better form of valor.

“Does it matter?” the Keeper sighed. “I am serving this need, a necessary task which is all that I deserve.”

“Deserve?” the Doctor hissed.

“How did they burn your telepathic centers out without triggering regeneration?” Jack blurted out. If he could get the Doctor to not work up a good head of indignant rage, they might get out of this time pearl alive. And sane. Mostly sane. As sane as the five of them could get, anyway.

At Jack’s question, Rose’s eyes went wide in horror and Sarah Jane blanched. The Doctor’s throat worked silently, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed down some response.

“I did it myself,” the Keeper replied, with a strange, dead calmness, “except for the last piece, which the Lady President herself accomplished. As it was internal and deliberate, I was able to circumvent the regenerative instinct by careful attention.”

“You”—the Doctor rasped—“you wouldn’t be able to operate with that level of precision with any kind of pain blocks or relief agents.” Jack saw Rose’s eyes well up and her mouth tremble. Soft-hearted Rosie, even giving compassion to this asshole.

“Of course not,” the Keeper said with sour exasperation. “I didn’t deserve any relief from pain, so it mattered little in the end. I had a task worth doing. And I escaped Rassilon.” He met Jack’s eyes briefly. “Immortality grows stale eventually.”

Jack felt his mouth twist. Rosie’s sad eyes turned toward him as Sarah Jane frowned and the Doctor’s face flushed with guilt. Before anyone could go down that dead horse of a path, Jack decided to ask all the questions he’d been sitting on.

“So what is your task?” he asked the Keeper. “Because it’s not just picking out the Doctor’s friends to become Time Lords, is it? What did your sexy Lady President really want?” Jack thought back to his first conversation with the Keeper. “What’s the real agenda? And no bullshitting.”

The Keeper harrumphed briefly before the Doctor’s voice interrupted. “They want me invested in the Time Lords, instead of rebelling against them. If I’ve picked them all, then I care about their outcome. That’s why you retrieved Rose first, wasn’t it?”

The Keeper gestured agreement, yet said nothing.

Rosie looked a little wounded—and worried. “Is that why I’m here? As some kind of hold on you?” She bit her lower lip. “And we bonded! I fell right into their plans and didn’t even think about it.”

The Doctor gripped her hand between both of his. “No, Rose, no. They might have chosen to retrieve you first—everything else was our choice. You and me. Shiver and Shake. Sapphire and Steel. Starsky and Hutch. Laverne and Shirley. Finn and Jake.”

Rosie and Sarah Jane stared at him blankly. Some of those names seemed familiar to Jack but he couldn’t quite place them.

“No, never using those pairings again,” the Doctor muttered. “You and me, Rose. The two of us together.”

“Stuff of Legend?” she whispered.

“Absolutely.”

They smiled into each other’s eyes like some 28th century rom-com from Gestalt, only with fewer tentacles. Jack was giddy with the idea that the two of them had finally shagged. This was a bizarre kind of Morning After, but it seemed pretty par for the course for these two.

“But Rose is still part of your emotional investment into the new Time Lords,” Sarah Jane interrupted. “And so, to a lesser extent, am I.” She frowned, clearly thinking fiercely. “Is our presence supposed to change your behavior?”

Jack, the Doctor and the two Time Ladies turned to the Keeper. “The Lady President hoped your need would influence the outcome,” he replied.

“Did she truly think anything would stop the Doctor from travelling?” Sarah Jane asked. “That somehow the needs of a New Gallifrey would keep him planet-bound?”

Jack scoffed aloud. There was no way the Doctor would ground his TARDIS and stop travelling permanently. No. Way. He’d go mad.

The Doctor was deep in thought. His jaw worked as different ideas and possibilities sped through his mind and across his face. Suddenly his gaze whipped up to meet the Keeper’s eyes. “Why is my _t_ _ehlsohka_ a Loom Mistress?”

“Do they think they’ll keep me planet bound because of my job—and you next to me, then? Because they want you to stick around and keep them on the straight and narrow?” Rose asked.

Sarah Jane snickered. “As if that would work.”

“Keeper…” the Doctor growled. “Why is my **_t_ _ehlsohka_ ** a Loom Mistress? That Archetype is not an accident.”

The Keeper peered at the Doctor from under bushy white eyebrows that, somehow, didn’t manage to shield his frustration. “How could such a brilliant mind do so poorly in the Academy?” he wheezed.

“Borusa.” Now the Doctor’s voice was flat and cold—colder than Woman Wept. “Why is my **_t_ _ehlsohka_ ** a Loom Mistress?”

The Keeper and the Doctor waged a silent war of burning eyes and subtle expressions. Finally, the Keeper capitulated with a sigh. “Your seed, too, must be in the Looms, Doctor. In the Looms and spread throughout the next generation of Time Lords. It is the best path—not only for survival, but also to success. She,” he sighed gustily, “is the only one who can place it there. No other choices lead to that path. And that path is the one we are taking.”

Rose’s jaw dropped. “Is he watching your choices, and warping them, like you asked me not to do?”

The Doctor frowned. “Yes. And he’s going to stop right now.”

184/319/63/9058


	50. A Longer Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Keeper learns that Romana was no fool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gallifreyan Pronunciation Guide!  
> kraaltek (krah-AHL-tekk)

_“Borusa.” Now the Doctor’s voice was flat and cold—colder than Woman Wept. “Why is my_ tehlsohka _a Loom Mistress?”_

_The Keeper and the Doctor waged a silent war of burning eyes and subtle expressions. Finally, the Keeper capitulated with a sigh. “Your seed, too, must be in the Looms, Doctor. In the Looms and spread throughout the next generation of Time Lords. It is the best path—not only for survival, but also to success. She,” he sighed gustily, “is the only one who can place it there. No other choices lead to that path. And that path is the one we are taking.”_

_Rose’s jaw dropped. “Is he watching your choices, and warping them, like you asked me not to do?”_

_The Doctor frowned. “Yes. And he’s going to stop right now.”_

“I cannot,” the Keeper said, shaking his head. “I **dare** not.”

The Doctor’s mouth flattened into a line and the Keeper blanched, eyes flicking over something Rose couldn’t see. “Then we’re done here, aren’t we? Enjoy your death, Borusa. You won’t be seeing me again.” He turned and began to walk back to the TARDIS, calling back over his shoulder, “Sarah Jane? Jack? Are you staying?”

Jack lurched forward, grasping Sarah Jane’s hand, and yelled back, “Nope! Be right there!” as they scrambled to follow. Sarah Jane gawped at something only she could see. “They’re all dead,” she gasped to Jack. “Every timeline is dead! All grey and flat, no color in them at all.”

The Keeper shook off his shock. “Doctor, would you truly leave the Lady President’s last wish unfulfilled? For all these bodies to go to waste? For these TARDISes to wither and die, unflown?”

The Doctor stopped and shot a glare back at the Keeper over his and Rose’s clasped hands. “To thwart you? Oh, yes. Yes, yes and yes again.”

“Do you truly hate me enough to leave your human friends to die?” the Keeper asked.

“They’re already dead, Borusa. Simple human deaths at the end of simple human lives. I care enough about them to not make them something like you.”

The Keeper’s head snapped backward, as if stung. Then his eyes glinted strangely and he replied, “Do you hate me enough to leave your **_t_** ** _ehlsohka_** alone for 10 regenerations?”

And with that, Rose felt a sudden flare of rage against the Keeper, rage that was entirely her own; that voice was as smug and oily as Eirik’s—that tosser who lived downstairs from Mickey on the estates. Eirik had tried to feel her up after she came back to live with Mum, telling Rose that any girl who was Jimmy’s reject should feel grateful that somebody still wanted her. The knee he got to the groin made him think twice about trying that again. She tore her hand out of the Doctor’s and marched back to the Keeper, where she hauled off and slapped him across his face. To her satisfaction, his whole head rocked over. He lifted a gnarled hand to his cheek, where a bright red handprint blared, and stared at her in shock.

“How dare you,” she hissed. “How **dare** you try to use me as a—as a—as a chokechain to pull him into line! You smug, condescending **_arsehole_**! You vile, nasty-minded, petty tinpot”— she sputtered —“ ** _kraaltek_**!” Rose heard Sarah Jane’s choking noise behind her, and the Doctor’s snort of amusement. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, memories awakening with the Keeper’s arrogant attempt at manipulation. “You didn’t even bother to ask.” She leaned forward and growled into his face. “How do I, a mere Loom Mistress, know that you volunteered for this? How do I know that you begged the Lady President—on your belly, grasping her foot with your fingertips—for the chance to make her plan work? How you oh-so-smugly told her that you knew how the Doctor thought and you could make him choose to bring the Time Lords to life again?” As Rose snarled out the newly-woken memories, the Keeper’s face was overtaken with a deepening expression of horror. Rose poked a finger into his hollowed chest and delivered her _coup de grace_. “She left those memories with me, because she didn’t trust you as much as you like to pretend she did.”

The Doctor’s low, bitter laugh filled the chamber. “Romana played a longer—and better—game than you, Borusa. Looks like I’m not the only one who underestimated her.”

The Keeper turned his face away. “So you know,” he cleared his throat, “you see all my shames.”

“Each and every one.”

“Being released from the tomb?”

“And how you asked Rassilon to let you die—and he refused.”

“Here I was thinking I had no pride left.”

“You’re so full of pride it’s gone straight to arrogance,” Rose responded flatly. “You didn’t even bother teaching Sarah Jane how to filter the Doctor’s timelines out, so she wasn’t skewing what you were trying to manipulate. The Doctor showed me, but you didn’t bother showing her. She’s still seeing timelines.”

“They’re all flat and grey. They were like opals, all that color,” Sarah Jane murmured. Rose heard the Doctor whispering instructions to her fellow Time Lady, while she faced down the Keeper.

“I’ve stopped. Sarah Jane’ll stop. And you will stop. Skewing. The. Doctor’s. Timelines,” she growled. “Or I will lock you in a small room with Jack for the rest of your final life.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Jack.”

The Keeper’s face worked briefly before his head bowed. “As you say, Loom Mistress.”

“And the TARDIS will be watching you.”

His head snapped up.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t trust you any more than Lady Romana did, so there’s gonna be someone watching the Doctor’s timelines to make sure you’re not mucking about with them. And the TARDIS and I?” Rose lifted her hand and crossed her middle finger over her index finger. “We’re like this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’d better be afraid of the big, bad wolf. There’s a reason the Daleks call me The Abomination.”

The Keeper swallowed briefly and nodded in acquiescence.

 

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	51. Where Do We Put Them?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Doctor," Rose asked, "before we turn any more people like Sarah Jane and me into Time Lords ... where are we gonna put them?”

_“Oh, yeah. I don’t trust you any more than Lady Romana did, so there’s gonna be someone watching the Doctor’s timelines to make sure you’re not mucking about with them. And the TARDIS and I?” Rose lifted her hand and crossed her middle finger over her index finger. “We’re like this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’d better be afraid of the big, bad wolf. There’s a reason the Daleks call me The Abomination.”_

_The Keeper swallowed briefly and nodded in acquiescence._

With a final glare, Rose turned from the Keeper to everyone else. She reached for the Doctor’s hand, and he gripped hers, interlocking their fingers. They did it automatically, without looking or noticing or paying attention. Jack couldn’t help but grin. She was thinking, Jack could tell, by the way she frowned and worried at her other thumb.

“Doctor…” she trailed off.

“Hmmm?” the Time Lord asked.

“Before we make any more people like Sarah Jane and me—turning your human friends into Time Lords”—

— “and Ladies” — the Doctor interrupted with a grin.

— “and Ladies,” she agreed, and continued “where are we gonna put them?”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped a bit. He leaned in and smiled at Rose, his whole body quivering with glee. “Rose Tyler,” he said, savoring the words, “you always ask the best questions.”

“I assume,” Sarah Jane said slowly, ‘that the Lady President had a plan.”

“Well,” the Doctor harrumphed, “she was a planner, Romana. Not her best quality.”

Three sets of raised eyebrows answered him. Rosie grinned up at him, tongue in teeth. “Bet that drove you mad, all her planning. Interrupting you making it up as you go along.”

The Doctor leaned down from the waist and grinned back. “Ruined everything.”

“While you were trying hard to be sooooo impressive?”

“I didn’t have to try to be ‘soooooo’ impressive!”

Much to Jack’s disappointment (and relief, to be honest), Sarah Jane doused their flirting with a question directed … elsewhere.

“Keeper?”

“Inquisitor?” he replied.

“What was the Lady President’s plan for the reborn Time Lords? Where were we supposed to live?”

The answer occurred to Jack almost immediately, based on the lessons of the Time Agency—places they were sworn to avoid upon pain of death (or unmaking)—and the lectures from the gruff Doctor in his leather coat. Jack’s own experience with the last time he had seen Rosie’s face before today had its impact, too. He met the Doctor’s eyes as the same idea bloomed in both their minds, half a breath before the Keeper’s brittle response.

“The Medusa Cascade.”

Jack wasn’t sure if the Doctor breathed out a prayer or a curse. Perhaps it was both at the same time.

The Keeper’s surprise was palpable. “How did you know, Fixed Point?”

“Caan,” Jack snarled.

“And Davros,” Sarah Jane added.

Rosie looked up at the Doctor. “The Medusa Cascade?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I thought that was the planet with the flying stingrays?”

“That’s the only planet close enough, but it’s not the Cascade itself.”

“Why’d it have to be a planet?” she asked. “We could have just flown the TARDIS.”

The Doctor looked down at Rose, with an expression that Jack recognized from a craggy face with blue eyes, not brown, and replied, so softly, “I had to have soil under my feet to have that conversation.”

“Oh,” was Rosie’s only reply, her eyes shining. Jack would have sold his left nut to understand what was going on with that whole exchange.

Sarah Jane drew in a sharp breath and pivoted back toward the Keeper. “It’s not just because of the rift here, is it? That you are the Keeper of Possibilities? It’s because of the infinite possibilities within the Cascade—where the Time Lords are supposed to take root, as well!”

The Keeper stared at her with astonished eyes. “The Doctor chose well, Lady Inquisitor. You understand.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “All things are possible within the Cascade.”

The Keeper’s eyes lit with a fiery glee. “Including the rebirth of the Lords of Time.”

“Except for one problem,” the Doctor interrupted. The Keeper and Sarah Jane turned their eyes to him. “All that possibility means you can’t just sit there and observe time. It’s not temporally inert, like Gallifrey. You have to leave the Cascade to monitor time as it actually happens—not just the possibility of it happening.”

“Yes,” the Keeper croaked. “That was the Lady President’s intention. No more non-intervention policies. No more isolation from the universe.”

“Don’t you DARE,” Rosie hissed.

“Rose?” The Doctor frowned.

“He’s looking at your timelines again, while he’s talking,” she answered, eyes never leaving the Keeper. “TARDIS just told me.” Jack glanced over at the Keeper’s face; the old thing looked shocked and nauseous. The best part was that this time, it wasn’t Jack’s fault. Rose took a half-step toward the Keeper. “You keep your time sense to yourself or we”—

She halted suddenly, unsure.

— “Or we walk away,” the Doctor finished, with a bitter twist to his mouth. “Remember that.” He paused—a half-breath—then drawled each syllable out: “Borusa.”

Jack was pretty sure that using a Time Lord’s name, instead of their title, in just this way… was an insult. And that the Doctor was doing it on purpose.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: This Rose is from an alternate timeline and never experienced the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.


	52. Living Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It was the mid-43rd century," Jack said, "and nobody could figure out where it went.”  
> “Not even the Time Agency?” Rose asked.  
> “We couldn’t go there and then. Our vortex manipulators couldn’t punch through whatever had that part of time and space blocked,” he replied.

_“Don’t you DARE,” Rosie hissed._

_“Rose?” The Doctor frowned._

_“He’s looking at your timelines again, while he’s talking,” she answered, eyes never leaving the Keeper. “TARDIS just told me.” Jack glanced over at the Keeper’s face; the old thing looked shocked and nauseous. The best part was that this time, it wasn’t Jack’s fault. Rose took a half-step toward the Keeper. “You keep your time sense to yourself or we”—_

_She halted suddenly, unsure._

_— “Or we walk away,” the Doctor finished, with a bitter twist to his mouth. “Remember that.” He paused—a half-breath—then drawled each syllable out: “Borusa.”_

_Jack was pretty sure that using a Time Lord’s name, instead of their title, in just this way… was an insult. The Doctor really shone at delivering insults this way._

“So, what do we do, Doctor?” Rose asked. “Do we go to this Cascade and set up a living place, then come back and change people into Time Lords?”

“Oi!” the Doctor replied. “I’m people, too!”

“Fine,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Humans, then. Humans into Time Lords.” Rose gnawed at a thumbnail, worrying it between her teeth. “Is there a place to even live, there? Do we have to build one?”

“We could steal one,” Jack piped up. “There are a lot of mysterious disappearances over the centuries.”

“Captain…” Sarah Jane chided.

“No, really!” he replied. “You’ll know the story of the _Marie Celeste_ , right? People disappear off of a ship in the middle of the ocean. Ships have disappeared, too, and the people survived. The _SS Baychimo_ disappeared in the 1960s, after being a ghost ship for 30 years.”

“Yes,” she murmured, drawing on her human memories. “I did hear about that. Before I fell into the Doctor’s orbit, of course.”

“A salt-riddled steamer isn’t spaceworthy, Jack,” the Doctor scoffed.

“What about the _Terra Proxima_ , then? Or the _Kal’enal_? Or even the _G*k;tak_?”

Rose stared at Jack like he was mad, then turned to see the Doctor’s reaction. He was deep in thought. “Doctor?” she asked.

“Ghost ships, Rose,” he said. “Crews evacuated, no live lost… but the ships themselves were never found.”

“The _G*k;tak_ was a space station, which was part of the mystery. It was the mid-43rd century and nobody could figure out where it went.”

“Not even the Time Agency?”

“We couldn’t go there and then. Our vortex manipulators couldn’t punch through whatever had that part of time and space blocked.”

“Do you think it was the Time Lords, then?”

“There was some suspicion that it was, even though they were half-considered a myth. The Time Lords. Or some other temporal-based species—the Tharils? Some kind of chronovore, maybe.”

“Chronovores… creatures who eat time,” Rose announced, a bit tentatively, the professor in her head feeding her information.

The Doctor grinned at Rose. “You really do have a spectacular knowledge base in that Time Lady brain of yours now!”

She grinned back. “Almost as spectacular as yours?”

“Weeeellllll,” the Doctor drawled back.

“Doctor. Rose.” Sarah Jane spoke with a tone of exasperation. “Focus, please?”

“Right-o!”

“So, this _G*k;tak_ ,” Rose said, slowly. “Would it be somewhere the Time Lords could live? Is it big enough and sturdy enough?”

“It would be,” the Keeper rasped out. They all jolted—they’d forgotten he was there. “If you included this facility in your plans.”

Sarah Jane blinked. “How would you transport it there? This is a pocket dimension attached to a temporal rift.”

“Exactly.”

The small brunette scoffed. “What would you do, slide it along the rift to the Cascade, like a pearl on a thread?”

“Oh!”

“What, Doctor?” Sarah Jane asked.

“You’re brilliant! Brilliant Sarah Jane!”

“Whatever for?”

“Like a pearl on a string!”

“You said this place was like a pearl,” Jack added slowly.

“Yes!” the Doctor enthused. “You’re the ultimate irritant and this is a pearl!”

“Thanks, Doc. I think.”

“We really can grab this whole pocket dimension, this temporal pearl, and slide it along the rift until it connects to the Cascade. That’s the pathway open—it’s how you were getting out with the Time Ring, Jack: it navigated that thread until you slipped out the other end.”

“And emerged through the Cascade…”

“Making everything you did branching out of there more possible!”

“Yes,” the Keeper intoned. “As the Lady President planned.”

“Killjoy,” the Doctor grumped.

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The _Marie Celeste_ and _SS Baychimo_ are well-known ghost ships.  
>  The _Terra Proxima, Kal’enal_ and _G*k;tak_ are my own creation.  
>  The _Kal'enal_ is a reference to the works of Mercedes Lackey.


	53. Loom Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can we even leave?” Rose wondered. “The Time Rings aren’t powerful enough to move a space station—it would have to be the TARDIS. Can she get out and get back in again?”  
> “Especially with the Doctor’s driving,” Jack added with a laugh.  
> “Oi!”

_“And emerged through the Cascade…”_

_“Making everything you did branching out of there more possible!”_

_“Yes,” the Keeper intoned. “As the Lady President planned.”_

_“Killjoy,” the Doctor grumped._

“Which do we do first, then?” Rose asked. “Create the living space, or make more Time Lords?”

“Living space,” Jack blurted. You had to have the space before you recruited the troops. Although he could see his military metaphor being met with some reluctance on the Doctor’s part.

“Yes, I agree,” Sarah Jane said. “It would be the most efficient path, to slowly introduce people to a mutual space that already exists, rather than something they have to stumble into later.”

And Sarah Jane said it better. Or at least, more acceptably.

“Can we even leave?” Rose wondered. “The Time Rings aren’t powerful enough to move a space station—it would have to be the TARDIS. Can she get out and get back in again?”

Rosie really shouldn’t keep feeding him straight lines like that. “Especially with the Doctor’s driving,” Jack added with a laugh.

“Oi!”

“It’s a legitimate concern, Doctor. This is a very small set of coordinates to target,” Sarah Jane replied.

The Doctor glared at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. She maintained a bland, innocent expression while Rose snickered in the background. Jack just guffawed—Sarah Jane Smith had a champion poker face.

“Oi!”

Jack swallowed enough laughter to speak. “You know, the Companions’ Club meeting room is going to have to be huge. Just wait, Rosie, ’til you hear stories from the Chestertons about what he was like in his first body.” They’d all heard a number of them. The Chestertons were a friendly pair, still spry and young in spirit for being in their late 80s. He hoped they would accept being Time Lords—they were distressingly monogamous but great conversationalists. And the stories!

Sarah Jane smiled. “I only met _that_ him once, and he was very … grumpy. Much more so than either of my Doctors.” Sarah Jane’s had been the caped Third and scarfed Fourth that he’d taken such pains to avoid all over the UK while he was living through the 20th century. Third had been a bit serious, Fourth more than a little loopy.

The Keeper stared at them, aghast. “He is to be the new Founder—show at least that much respect.”

Jack, Rose and Sarah Jane sobered immediately. However, the idea of the Doctor being held up as some kind of god … Rose’s eyes met Sarah Jane’s—and they all started laughing again. The Doctor was watching the byplay, annoyed.

“Now you know the _real_ reason Rassilon got rid of Omega and the Other,” Rose said to the Doctor, with a fading giggle. “It was to keep them from telling stories about him. Probably about his fashion sense.” Which, after seeing the Doctor’s Sixth form, Jack understood. Rose suddenly frowned.

“Yes,” the Doctor muttered. Jack shook his head at this sudden change. Sarah Jane was frowning, too.

“What am I missing here?” Jack asked.

“Hm? Oh! Rose is probably right,” the Doctor replied. “I encountered Rassilon repeatedly during the War. The three Founders of Time Lord society were Rassilon, Omega and the Other.”

“The Other?” Jack asked. “Does that name mean he was a Renegade like you and the Master?”

The Doctor shrugged. “No one knows. He disappeared after Omega was trapped in the black hole. Legend says he threw himself into the Looms, his genetic material scattered throughout Gallifrey’s children.”

Jack thought back over a conversation with the Keeper. “’Til a whole batch of Renegade kids comes along with more than their fair share of it?” he asked the old Time Lord.

The Keeper returned a wintery smile. “That would explain much,” he wheezed.

“Bah,” the Doctor replied, with a dismissive handwave. “Nature vs. nurture and all that.”

“Doctor,” the Keeper replied with a harrumph, “I taught Academy courses for my entire 5th incarnation. There never was a student group like yours. Never. More Renegades came from that single Loom season than in the 151 before it or the 74 after it.”

The Doctor blinked uncertainly. “Oh.” He opened his mouth, closed it and shook his head, holding a hand out to Rose. “That’s neither here nor there, is it? Let’s go get the _G*k;tak_ , shall we?”

Jack shook his head. Typical Doctor. Avoid the question entirely. Jack hoped Rosie wasn’t letting him get away with that. Although, judging by her sideways glance …? He wasn’t going to for long. The thought made some tight knot of worry in his chest loosen up. The Doctor needed someone to look after him; idiot wasn’t going to do it himself.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed with a grin. “Let’s go get the _G*k;tak_.”

 

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	54. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor,” Sarah Jane said, her voice slow and curious. “Won’t we need more than one TARDIS to retrieve the G*k;tak? Your TARDIS is vast and powerful, but she’s still only a single extrapolation point. Won’t transporting an entire space station need a triangle to create a temporal field?”
> 
>  
> 
> The question brought the Doctor’s tumble of energy up short.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My holiday gift to you. Happy Christmas!

_The Doctor blinked uncertainly. “Oh.” He shook his head and held a hand out to Rose. “That’s neither here nor there, is it? Let’s go get the_ G*k;tak _, shall we?”_

_Jack shook his head. Typical Doctor._

“Doctor,” Sarah Jane said, her voice slow and curious.

“Hmmm?”

“Won’t we need more than one TARDIS to retrieve the _G*k;tak_? Your TARDIS is vast and powerful, but she’s still only a single extrapolation point. Won’t transporting an entire space station need a triangle to create a temporal field?”

That brought the Doctor’s tumble of energy up short.

“That’s… a very good question, Sarah Jane.” He stood motionless for a few moments, tongue tucked up behind his front teeth. “Yeeeaaaaaasssss,” he drawled eventually, dropping Rose’s hand with a sigh. “A minimum of three. Five would be better, nine would be ideal, but three are necessary.” With the Doctor’s decrease in energy, it seemed to Jack that Rose’s was bubbling up.

“Does that mean—” she asked, exchanging excited glances with Sarah Jane.

“You need to fly a TARDIS of your own. Both of you.”

“YES!” both women exulted and hugged.

————————————————

In the end, the Keeper chose TARDISes for them. “They are the oldest and longest Collared,” he said. “They will follow the Doctor’s TARDIS with minimal adjustments from you.”

“Why don’t you fly one, too?” Rose asked. “Four would be better than three.”

The Keeper frowned.

“He can’t leave the pearl, Rose,” the Doctor said. “Even a TARDIS’ state of temporal grace won’t preserve him if he re-enters the universe’s time stream.”

Rose’s eyes rounded with surprise. “He won’t exist?”

“He will never have existed, and would create a paradox—because **_you_** exist.”

“This me—this Time Lord me?”

“Yes.”

“Reapers, like my dad?”

“Yes.”

The Keeper’s bushy brows rose at this exchange but, to Jack’s surprise, he remained silent. Jack wondered if the old guy was looking at timelines while he thought Rose was distracted. Jack hoped not—this project was doing wonders for the Doctor’s state of mind.

Rose’s next question died on her lips. “Well, how about Ja—”

The Doctor’s reply was gentle. “He’ll fly with me. The Old Girl can tolerate him better than your young ones.”

Rose’s mouth turned down and her eyes lifted to Jack’s. “Yeah,” she said quietly, “she helped make him, after all.”

Ah, Rosie, still feeling guilty. “Someone has to make sure he doesn’t find that mallet, you know,” Jack said with a grin. He was done talking about this.

“Oi!”

As he hoped, the two women laughed at the Doctor’s affronted noise.

————————————————

The Doctor was whirling around the console with his usual madcap energy, while Jack could see on the viewscreen, Sarah Jane and Rose moved around their consoles with more grace and precision, respectively. Their TARDIS navigation systems were tandem-locked to the Doctor’s TARDIS, so wherever his ship went, theirs would parallel it. “Here we go,” the Doctor yelled, “through the barriers! Allons-y!” Jack gripped the railing and laughed. He swayed up against a coral strut as the Doctor’s TARDIS went careening through the vortex and murmured, “Did he tell you that President Romana saved a bunch of parts, just for you?”

The TARDIS’ lights flickered.

“Jack,” the Doctor warned, “stop flirting with my ship.”

The immortal man grinned over at the Time Lord. “Just letting her know she has something to look forward to,” Jack replied. “In case you forget to mention it to her.” He freed one hand and petted the strut. “This pretty lady deserves some TLC.”

The TARDIS’ lights cascaded and her hum changed pitch.

“Oh, he’s all talk,” the Doctor replied to the TARDIS, “as well you know.” He stroked the console and adjusted the helmic regulator. “I’m the one who takes care of you.”

Rose and Sarah Jane’s eyes met over the viewscreen at this and they burst into laughter.

“What?”

The two Time Ladies laughed harder.

“What?!?”

With a final shudder, the Doctor’s TARDIS dropped out of the vortex into free space. “Here we are, 43rd Century!” The Doctor slammed a hand down on a control on the console and the screen behind him split into three: on the left, Rose in her TARDIS; on the right, Sarah Jane in hers. And in the center, Jack could see the _G*k;tak_ ’s hourglass shape slowly twisting in place.

“Centrifugal gravity,” Sarah Jane remarked. “That helps.”

“Yes, it’s a bit old-fashioned for the Time Lords, but it works,” the Doctor replied. He turned back toward his console. “Now, we should be at the time after the station was abandoned—all personnel should be cleared out.”

“Why did they leave?” Rose asked.

“Radiation leak contaminated the hydrogen source,” the Doctor supplied. “Allegedly.”

Rose gasped. “That’s not safe! Why are we—”

“Röntgen radiation, Rose,” the Doctor replied.

She grinned at him. “You loved saying that, didn’t you?”

“Maaaayyyybe,” he grinned back.

Jack looked over at Sarah Jane’s face on the screen. “And that means what?” he asked her.

Her lips quirked. “Röntgen radiation was background noise on Gallifrey,” she replied. “No more an effect on Gallifreyans than, oh, the equivalent of slightly too warm cup of tea. It was a toy among the older children.”

“So, it’s safe for you.”

“Yes, Captain. Although likely not for you.”

“So, Mum, do I need to stay inside, or am I allowed to go out and play with everyone else?” Jack snarked.

“I’m sure the Doctor has either protective gear or medical assistance to deal with this,” she replied coolly.

“That I do!” the Doctor said, disappearing down below the console briefly. Jack could hear him from under his feet. “Orange is a terrible color for you, Jack, but I’m sure you’ll make the best of it.” The Doctor pulled an orange spacesuit from under the TARDIS decking.

Rose laughed. Jack would wear a gorilla suit to get her keep doing it.

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End file.
